Gadget
by Rhydeble
Summary: What if a 19 year old Armsmaster has a small indiscretion What if, almost fifteen year later, he finds out that he has a teenage daughter? This is the story of Sely Wallis, a fourteen year old kleptomaniac tinker, and her adventures in the town of Westlake, Wyoming, eventually moving to the city of Brockton Bay. Starts a year before canon.
1. Chapter 1,1

**Chapter 1.1**  
Collin looked out over the future battlefield, snowflakes slowly drifting down, melting as they hit the ground. A happy coincidence. Had the ground been colder, their camouflage shields might have been compromised. Given the sheer amount of prep-time that had gone into this operation, it would've been a shame to see it ruined by the weather.

The location had been carefully chosen. It was boxed in by abandoned buildings, right on the edge of the territory that was nominally claimed by Skidmark, close to the empty ship hulls that marked the old docks of the bay.

Slowly but surely, they'd laid the seed for this confrontation. Fake graffiti tags from the empire, sting operations within Winslow high-school, the right rumours spread by people from the Dockworkers association, several fake arrests of undercover operatives, and a fake Protectorate event on the other side of town, all complemented by a team-up with New Wave.

The hum of an engine suddenly penetrated through their optic shielding, louder than expected. Squealer. Everyone's head turned, looking at the incoming Merchants. Skidmark, Squealer, Mush, Flush, and Snot. None of their names made any sense, which was useful, because you immediately knew whether a given cape was a Merchant or not. At least it was an efficient.

On the other side of the fight would be the Empire, or E88 as they preferred, the eights referring to the eight letter of the alphabet, and through that, to Hitler. Maybe somewhere in some alternate universe, people didn't immediately know what they meant with their ludicrously transparent codes, but in Brockton Bay-Bet, it wasn't working.

Unlike the Merchants, the cape roster of the Empire was large enough that they wouldn't send everyone. It had made preparations more difficult, but not impossible. Given the way in which they had instigated the fight, they could make certain predictions. The main focus would be Hookwolf, an unrepentant murderer that took a perverse pleasure in slaughter. To get him of the streets was the main goal, and because of that, Armsmaster would personally initiate the fight with him. He had a couple of nasty surprises hidden in his halberd for just that reason.

He saw them arrive as well, walking through the streets toward the point of battle. Hookwolf stood in front, balancing himself on four metal limbs, almost completely transformed already. To his side, just behind him, were his main allies, Cricket and Stormtiger. The animal-themed trio was anything but kid-friendly. Except maybe for Nazi-children.

Victor and Othala were there too, a deadly combo if there ever was one. The couple, and his analytical programs suggested that they were so in more than just as a combat team, could adapt to their opponent with Othala's trump power, and steal the enemies capabilities with Victors skill leaching. Any tie against them was actually a loss because of that. Sure, the capabilities would slowly return, but Victor kept them, and not having the skill was rather problematic.

On the other hand, that was what had led him to finally create the autonomous driving program for his motorcycle.

Their team was filled out with the Boulder, a geokinetic that couldn't stop talking about himself in the third-person and pretended he was a professional wrestler when he wasn't kicking non-white puppies, and Botanica, who had powers that made trees and other plant-life an extension of his body, mostly using it as a brute-rating in some strange rendition of power-armour.

"Looks like things are about to kick off" Lady Photon said, stating exactly what was already obvious to everyone present.

Armsmaster nodded. "No Rune or Purity either, at least not right now. We're going with plan B, does everyone have their targets?"

People nodded in agreement. It was a boon that they hadn't brought any fliers, except for possibly Othala's target, but her using her power for flight meant she couldn't use it for something more dangerous.

This was the part where they waited, until the Empire and the Merchants were fully occupied with each other. At that point, they'd use their initiative to immediately get everyone into their best match-up. Lady Photon and Laserdream would blast whatever vehicles Squealer had brought to the fight, immediately taking away the possibility for escape from the Merchants. Brandish would take down Mush.

Velocity would attempt to take down Snot by surprise, covering his slimy exterior with the pieces of cloth that had been prepared around the battlefield. The cloth would glue to his slimy exterior, stopping him from doing anything else in the fight.

Miss Militia's task would be to snipe down Flush, a large-scale shaker that created a weird analogue of a black hole, with some quick rubber bullets. Young Aegis, in the meantime, had offered to take down Skidmark with an aerial tackle.

On the other side of the confrontation, Shielder would start out by blocking of Othala, stopping her from using her Trump power. Flashbang would take down Cricket, using his power to counter her enhanced senses, and Manpower had proclaimed he wanted a 1on1 with Stormtiger.

Glory Girl, the newest cape among them, wanted to take down the Boulder. He'd had his reservations on that, but Photon Mom had trusted the girl's instincts, and there were a few capes on back-up if things went wrong. Dauntless, then, would take down Victor, which should be easy for him. After all, Victor would have nothing to steal.

Botanica would've normally been a real problem; the self-regenerating power armour was rather annoying in an extended fight, but Kid Win's latest gun, originally created to destroy debris on the battlefield, also turned out to work on living wood, but not human flesh. Without his wood, he'd be a slightly overweight fifty year old.

In the meantime, he'd be taking down Hookwolf. In a way, he looked forward to the fight, trading blows with a powerful opponent, with the safe knowledge that there were no civilians around to get hurt from collateral damage.

That left Assault and Battery ready for immediate back-ups, with Gallant and Triumph as a second layer.

The fight had started, Stormtiger blasting wind at the Merchants, and Victor throwing fireballs. Squealer's large vehicle, the merchant capes hanging on to it, started rolling forward.

"Wait for it…" he said. They'd have to time it right, if one of the gangsters died while they were waiting, there would be consequences.

A minute went by, and he could see the tension building up around him, only a small camouflage barrier shielding them from the fight. "Vista, are you ready?"

The girl, youngest member of the wards, but experienced nonetheless, looked intensely at the battlefield for a few seconds before answering. "Yes"

"Then we strike… NOW!"

He dashed forward, and jumped, the combination of his power armour and Vista's power allowing him to almost immediately reach Hookwolf, who was currently being launched backwards by one of Skidmark's zones on the ground. He shifted his halberd into his new spear mode, and struck forward, impaling Hookwolf on it.

It didn't work, at least, not in the conventional sense. Hookwolf's changer form reshaped itself, and he recovered from the strike. But the physical damage was only a distraction. The spear-head was charged with an energy that magnetized whatever it struck. Hookwolf hadn't noticed, at least not yet, and charged forward. A quick succession of strikes made him back off for a second, reshaping his torso to human form. He was getting more sluggish, had he noticed? Was that why he was shifting back?

"You're a filthy little race traitor aren't you?" The man said. Collin chose not to react to the frankly ridiculous accusation. Not only was the notion of race itself inconsistent, but to betray something implies previous loyalty.

He struck again, forcing Hookwolf back into his metal form, striking at the whirling blades. Then, Hookwolf went on a counterattack.

Blades whirled around, and it was everything he could do to block all the attacks. Hookwolf must've thought he was winning, but with every block, his body started getting more and more magnetized.

Eventually, the effect became noticeable. Individual pieces of metal started sticking together, or repelling each other.

Before he could finish the fight however, a large boulder came flying their way. Both of them dodged, creating distance between them.

"Huh, it seems like even your own people hate you." He said, taunting the murderer.

It worked, and Hookwolf jumped upwards, planning to strike from above.

Quickly, Armsmaster flipped around the spear, and activated the net launcher in the bottom. The metal net launched upwards, and Hookwolf, flying through the air, couldn't dodge it. It clung to him, being attracted by his now metallic body.

Armsmaster looked around, surveying the battle. Dauntless had taken down Victor, and decided to help Glory Girl, who was now lying on the ground next to the Boulder, having been tased by her ally.

Cricket had escaped somehow, as had Othala. The real problem was Stormtiger, who was holding back Manpower, Assault and Batter, as well as Shielder, who had obviously switched targets.

On the Merchant side, the battle seemed largely decided in their favour, although some of them had been able to get away.

Stormtiger was building up a serious amount of air pressure, one of Shielders barriers the only thing separating him from the Protectorate and New Wave capes.

"I suggest you surrender Stormtiger, you're drastically outnumbered, and you're no Lung." He said, walking towards the cape.

"Surrender? Seems to me that it's you guys who are afraid of me, not the other way around."

"Don't be stupid and put away that massive air pressure. Even if you manage to hurt, maim, or kill one of us, the rest of us would put you down or ensure you're send straight into the birdcage."

"Are you afraid of me Armsmaster, it's not often I see you threatening death on your enemies. Come on, it's just a little pressurized air".'

It was anything but a little bit of pressure. Behind Shielders force fields, now joined by those of Lady Photon and Laserdream, the air had become thick with the pressure, it looked like Stormtiger had difficulty breathing.

"Open up a small hole at the top. He's somehow creating extra pressure out of nowhere. He probably has generation powers as well as aerokinesis." He whispered to the teenage Shielder beside him. Something wasn't quite right, it looked like the Empire cape was stalling for time, but it wasn't likely that he still had reinforcements incoming.

He turned around, and saw his reinforced iron net lying on the ground, shred to pieces. Had Hookwolf somehow been able to escape through the magnetism? Or had Othala or another of the escapees done something?

At that moment, Stormtiger blasted his air downwards, the force driving him upwards through the gap that Shielder had made.

"Well, I guess he has mover capabilities too." Collin said, barely concealing his displeasure at the order of events. Still, they'd captured three Empire capes and three of the powered Merchants.

"Don't bother chasing Stormtiger, we need to secure the prisoners we have." He said to no-one in particular.

A call came into his armour, one of the PRT teams had found a half-dazed Cricket and managed to foam her down. That was four Empire capes down.

*** Armsmaster ***

The defeated villains had been loaded up into the PRT vans and were being taken to the Protectorate headquarters until their trial. In the meantime, the press had arrived, looking for information on the cities' latest parahuman altercation. He was about to walk over and explain what had happened, when he saw that Dauntless was already doing so.

"So Dauntless, can you tell us what happened here?"

"Well Rosette, there was a big fight between the Empire Eighty-Eight, the local neo-nazi's, and the Archer's bridge Merchants, a cape-led drug-selling ring. We were able to catch them off guard, and take them down. It's all in a days work you know."

"Still, seven capes arrested in one day, that must have been difficult!"

"Not really, They were distracted, it was actually rather easy to take them down."

It was always the same, Collin thought. It'd taken tight cooperation between the PRT, the police, the mayor's office and the Dockworkers to make this happen. They'd had a prepared PR statement, stressing the value of co-operation and communication between the people of the city. Dauntless, however, had decided that he could do everything on his own because he was friends with the journalist interviewing him. They'd arrested seven capes and thirty gang members, the idea that it was no big deal was preposterous.

But it probably wouldn't help his cause to get angry in front of the camera. He looked back at his wards. Kid Win was happy, his gun had made quick work of the wood-based cape. Velocity, about to graduate to the Protectorate, was rather grossed out by all the snot. Vista seemed to be happy about her contribution, getting everyone to their target, Gallant and Triumph looked bored, which, in the big scheme of thing, was a good thing.

Tonight, instead of tinkering, he'd relax a little. Paperwork could wait. It was time for pizza, ice-cream with cookie-dough, and the original StarTrek series. Dragon had told him about the series, and he had to admit, it was rather engrossing, even though the special effects were incredibly bad and the tinkering made absolutely no sense. Reversing polarities did not work that way.

The evening was starting, and a thin carpet of snow covered the city. Collin made his way to his car, where he changed out of his armour behind the tinted glass, and drove home. Today, his work was over, he would be able to relax, and there'd be no more surprises.


	2. Chapter 1,2

**Chapter 1.2**  
Darkness had fallen upon Brockton Bay. Not in the metaphorical sense, but literally. Metaphorically, it probably wouldn't be dark for a couple of days. After this large strike against the Merchants and the Empire, everything would be silent for a few days, while the remainders of those gangs planned a break-out, and the others tried to get the lay of the land.

In a week, Lung might be trying something, but for now, it was expected that the Asian gang leader would wait.

Colin parked his car in his personal parking spot, parking it in backwards, so that he could quickly leave if he got a call. The amber light of the streetlamps covered the streets in a warm glow, accentuated by slowly falling snowflakes. Doubly locking his trunk, where he had stored one of his suits of armour, he made his way towards his home. A two-storey luxury apartment on the bottom floor of a larger building, it's front door faced the street, with a small porch raised slightly above street level.

He didn't spend much time there. After all, it was difficult to justify taking time off when he could be out there, fighting the gangs, working in his workshop, studying his enemies and filling out paperwork. But at times like this, he needed some time off. An evening on the couch with a good TV-show or movie. Tomorrow, he could fill out the paperwork and prepare for the transportation of their new prisoners.

Walking towards his front door, he noticed something. A young girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, was sitting on his porch. Her shoulder-length blonde hair had snowflakes in it, and it looked like she'd been sitting there for a while. Her clothes were raggedy, Not to the degree that you usually saw in homeless children, but it looked like she hadn't changed clothes in a few days.

Her jeans were ripped, although he wasn't quite sure whether that was damage or simply a case of youth fashion, he was pretty sure some of the wards wore similar stuff. Her shoes were soaked, she probably hadn't taken them off in a while, putting them out to dry. She was wearing a ski-jacket, that seemed to be warm, but was a bit too small for her already small frame.

What caught his attention however, was the scarf. It was old and fraying, but there was a black and blue checkered pattern to it. The colours were faded, but he recognized it. It was something he'd given to his girlfriend, fifteen years ago, before they'd broken up.

Combined with the age of the girl, there was really only one conclusion he could make.

Someone was trying to get to him by pretending to be his daughter, from a relationship that had ended after three weeks, fifteen years ago.

He squatted before the girl. She hadn't noticed him yet, and at this angle, he could observe her face. Her eyes were wet with tears, but that wasn't the worrying part. The skin around her eye was black and blue, and her cheek had scratch-marks.

Either someone was trying to really play on his emotions, or this wasn't some stranger or changer.

"Hey, are you all right?" he asked.

She looked up towards him, sniffling, cleaning up her nose a bit.

"No…" the girl replied. Still crying and looking away.

She looked depressed and exhausted, waiting for something. For him, probably.

"Can I help you with something?"

One of her arms went towards her face, and wiped it slightly clean. Her hand looked cold. Not frostbitten, but not in a great condition either.

"I… uhm…"

She didn't finish her sentence, started sobbing again.

Colin searched his memory. What did he have inside that could be compromising? There were some research notes, but none of the classified stuff, it could probably be passed off as a general interest in capes. There were several guns hidden throughout the house, behind the Fridge, below his desk, those sorts of places, but they were locked to his biological patterns. They wouldn't fire unless they detected his fingerprint and a pulse. There wasn't any classified paperwork either, he was carefull to leave that at work, gave him an excuse not to work on it. The only problem would be a couple of work pictures of his civilian identity, from the ridiculous teambuilding exercises they sometimes had to do. Trivia quizzes against Hannah were absolutely impossible.

He reached out with his arm, placing it on the girls shoulder. She shrunk back a bit, either afraid of his touch, or of touching in general.

"Hey, what's your name?" he asked, fearing he already knew the answer, at least for her last name.

"...Sely…" she answered.

"Sely, what's your mother's name?"

She looked at him again, her eyes looking like those of a deer caught in the headlights of a truck. "Annabelle… Annabelle Pierce."

Well, that sealed the deal. His old girlfriend Annabelle had apparently gotten pregnant, and forgotten to tell him.

Three options then. This was some sort of trap, it wasn't a trap and Sely knew who he really was, or it wasn't a trap and Sely didn't know his secret identity.

And, he corrected himself, there was the possibility that she was his daughter, and it was also a trap. But that way lay madness and endless paranoia.

He stood up, and grabbed his keys from his pocket. The girl, Sely, looked up, really looking at him this time. A look of understanding came over her.

"Come on Sely, let's get you into something warmer."

The girl stood up, and they walked into the house. The girl was still sniffling, a combination of a cold and her emotional state.

It probably looked weird, a man ushering a young girl he didn't know into his home, but he had his reasons.

"…dad?" Sely said, almost in a whisper.

If this was a trick, he was going to stab someone. If it wasn't… he was probably still going to punch someone. Annabelle, most likely. Some people thought punching woman was wrong, but Colin had worked under Alexandria, he knew that gender had very little to do with that kind of stuff.

He ushered her towards the bathroom. "Come on, lets get you a nice warm shower."

She nodded, a look of confusion on her face.

Opening the bathroom door, he spoke to her again. "I'll go get you something warm and dry to wear okay, you get yourself cleaned up."

He closed the door behind him. Looking at a fourteen year old while she was showering was where he drew the line. Instead, he grabbed his phone, and started walking towards his bedroom, seeing whether he had some clothes she could wear.

In the meantime, he thought about who to call. On one hand, protocol demanded that he inform the PRT director in a possible master/stranger situation like this. However, if it wasn't a master/stranger situation. He shuddered at the thought of sending a young girl, his daughter, through master/stranger protocols after whatever had happened to her to reduce her to this state.

He could also call Dragon instead. On one hand, she'd be able to help him figure out whether or not this was a master/stranger protocol. On the other hand, if this girl was actually his daughter, she'd know what to do, because he had absolutely no idea what to do.

He started calling her, and on the third tone, she answered the call.

"Good evening Colin." Her voice came over the line, crisp and clear, slightly accented.

"Good evening Dragon." He replied.

She obviously heard something was wrong by the tone of his voice, she was good at that kind of thing. "Colin? What happened, did something go wrong with the afternoon's operation?"

"Beyond Dauntless's usual bullshit? Not this afternoon."

"Oh…" her voice went out. "What happened?"

"I'm not quite certain, but, can you run a check on someone called Annabelle Pierce?"

"Any reason? I mean, you know we're not supposed to just run check on people right?."

"Just… trust me all right."

Dragon was silent, and Colin took the time to grab some clothes from his closet that the girl could possibly wear. They'd be far too large, but it'd have to do for now. Eventually, he settled on an old sweater from the two years he'd spend in college with Chev, and some sweatpants.

After about a minute, Dragon's voice returned to the phone line.

"Are you sure she's yours?" she asked.

"Pretty sure, given the match in facial features and the timeframe."

"Wow… that's... heavy." She replied.

"She… She showed up on my doorstep today, and it looks like someone abused her. She's taking a shower right now and… I just don't know what to do."

Dragon replied faster than he expected. "I'll investigate it. In the meantime, just, keep her safe, and if you're worried about her wounds, try calling Panacea. I know she doesn't do house calls, but she'll probably make an exception when you tell her about the situation."

"I… Okay." He replied.

He went downstairs with the prepared clothes, and heard that the showerhead was still on. He set down the bundle, and walked towards his small kitchen to make some coffee.

As he was about to pour some into a second cup, Colin realized he had absolutely no idea whether or not fourteen year old girls drank coffee.

Vista, the twelve year old ward, drank coffee, but he was quite sure that that didn't mean other young girls did. Vista wasn't your average kid.

Looking around in his kitchen, he realized that he didn't actually have all that much that was appropriate for a fourteen-year old. There was some high-quality beer. Then he had a bottle of scotch he'd been saving up for, well, a situation just like this, after a big fight.

Not to mention the special stash. The post-endbringer stuff. The less said about that, the better.

H had some energy drinks… kids liked energy drinks, right? Except, they were about as bad as alcohol, giving it to her probably wasn't a very good idea.

Did he have something he could homebrew in a few minutes? He had a chocolate bar, some creamer he could repurpose… He could probably figure something out if he had a proper… His eyes moved to his coffee machine. It already had quite a few functions, for seven different types of coffee. No-one would notice if he added some more possibilities, and it should be a quick job. His hand went for his pocket, towards his trusty pocket-knife. Although, to compare it to that Swiss stuff was actually rather insulting.

*** Sely ***

The water wasn't just warm, it was hot. My nose felt like it was burning away, even though it wasn't that high a temperature… It was probably because I'd been outside for so long…

Maybe… maybe running away from home to find my real dad hadn't been a very good idea… I'm not quite sure what I'd expected. I'd never met the man, hadn't seen him outside a picture somewhere in an old photo-album of my mom's. Mom never really talked about him anyway.

His bathroom was nice though. White tiles and rich wooden furniture. One of those showerheads that was like twice as big as your head. It was amazing, much better than the small showerhead we had back at home. I reached up, trying to adjust it, but the movement made my ribs start hurting again. I decided to explore the rest of the shower instead.

There were only three different bottles of shampoo and shit. A big difference in comparison to all the shit mom had. Going over them, the first turned out to just be normal shampoo. The second was a bottle of bodywash, with a picture of Che-something on the front. You know, the famous knight cape guy that no-one could pronounce the name of, not the South-American dictator that was somehow also on t-shirts. The last bottle was filled with what was , according to the bottle at least, beard-shampoo. I had no idea it existed, and I think it had been some sort of gag-gift. As in a joke, not as in a gift that smelled really bad. Although it probably also smelled really bad. I removed the cap for a second, and confirmed that the joke did indeed work both ways.

More interesting was the buttons and handles. I'd quickly identified temperature and intensity when I'd started showering, but there was some other stuff.

I pulled one of the levers, not bothering to figure out what it did beforehand. As it turned out, it locked the bottom half of the shower door in place, and stopped the water from washing away, turning the shower into an impromptu bath-tub. It was like I was in a supervillains secret bathroom.

Was my dad a supervillain? Probably not, he had a beard, not a moustache, and the beard wasn't a goatee either. I was probably save.

Deciding to take advantage of the newly discovered bathtub functionality, I laid down, resting my head on the side of the tub. My body had finally adjusted to the warmth of the water, and I watched the mist rise from the warm water in the tub. My ribs were still hurting, like they had for three days now, and I was still afraid to touch my eye. I knew it'd be sort of all-right, I could still see out of it, I just didn't want to touch it cause it'd probably hurt.

The real problem was the ridiculous amount of snot flowing out of my nose now that it was being steamed out. It'd slowed down, but it was still happening. I'd gotten a cold in the days on the road, it'd probably be okay in a few days... Not that I had any idea where I'd be in a few days.

Lying back, I closed my eyes. After a while, the shower stopped working, just about when the tub was almost full. That was kinda cool… I opened my eyes to look at the ceiling for a bit. It was a nice clean white, and I got lost in the mist from the hot water getting sucked into the fan, slowly drifting away.

*** Armsmaster ***

"Carol speaking, Dallon household." Brandish's voice came over the phone.

"Evening Brandish, it's me, Armsmaster." He replied.

He heard a sigh coming over the phone. " it's 10 P.M. Armsmaster, this better be important. Someone break out already? Again?"

"The thing with Oni Lee was not… Look, it's… it's not Brandish I need, it's Carol."

The line was silent for a few seconds. "Is it something legal?"

"No, it's… although maybe there's…" he replied.

"Look, you're obviously distraught. Just tell me what happened."

He gasped for air, readying himself.

"When I got home… there was a fourteen year old girl on my doorstep, claiming she's my daughter… I… her story checks out, its just… I have absolutely no idea what to do, and…"

"And Sarah and I are some of the few actual parents you know."

"Yeah…"

"First of all… Do you know why she suddenly showed up?"

"Well, it probably has something to do with the bruises…"

He heard another sigh over the phone-line, although he was pretty certain that this one wasn't aimed at him.

"How is she right now?"

"I just checked before I called and… she fell asleep in the bathtub… you know…"

"I can see how that'd be a problem… I'll go get Amy and drop by for a bit. In the meantime, you should probably try go get into contact with her mother and figure out what happened."

It was… reassuring, knowing there was someone who knew what to do. Dragon had been helpful, but it wasn't like she had any experience with children either.

"Okay. I'll send you my address via text. And Carol?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

Collin put down the phone. That was one conversation done with. Perhaps it had been slightly manipulative, calling Carol instead of Sarah, sort of hoping she'd bring Panacea along. But then again, he also needed some legal advice about what the hell to do about suddenly having a daughter.

Now for the second phone call of the night. He opened up his laptop, it was time to catch up with Annabelle.

*** Annabelle ***

Why was David such a fucking asshole? The fucking douchebag had been cheating on her, with his stupid fucking face and his stupid fucking car and his stupid fucking job. Somehow, she hadn't been enough for him, somehow, he had to go through every stripper in town, plus quite a few from different towns.

She looked in the mirror. Was she ugly? Her hand went through her luxurious golden hair, still in top condition. She moved a bit, showing of her body to herself. Yes, she still had it.

It had been four days since Sely had shown her the pictures. three days since she'd confronted David. The last two days, she'd spend crying, devastated. David hated her now, and she hated David. Why couldn't she ever find a stable relationship? Someone who could stick by her, love her.

Perhaps it was time to go out again, try to find someone to fill up the hole in her heart. It had been three lonely days.

She went for her closet, trying to pick out a dress. Sure, she was in her thirties, but that wasn't too old for a miniskirt and a top. She could still pull it off. Now, where to go to catch someone?

Her phone rang. She wondered who it could be. David? Desperately wanting her back? Probably. Or had Sely gotten in some trouble again? That girl was never up to anything good, stalking her mother's boyfriends and taking pictures, no wonder David had gotten angry at her, the filthy adulterer.

She checked the display, and didn't recognize the number. It was a different area code, an out of state caller? She accepted the call.

"Hello? Annabelle here."

"Annabelle, it's been a while."

She recognized the voice, although she wasn't quite sure where from. Someone in town? Someone from her old high school class or something? It'd been quite a while since she'd last heard this voice, she was sure of it.

"Been a while indeed" she said, letting out a semi-suppressed giggle, the voice was nice, smooth, strong. Like that of someone who spoke with authority. Who was it? she racked her brain. She'd dated a big-shot lawyer once, and a rockstar, but this didn't sound like the voice of a rockstar.

"It's me, Colin."

Then she knew where she knew the voice from. Colin Wallis, an old flame, from back when she was what, nineteen or something? They'd met on that cruise she'd won tickets to.

And where her other boyfriends had been football players and college students, Colin had been a superhero, Armsmaster.

And, of course, Sely's father. Her little girl had his eyes. It was nice, reminiscing about old lovers. Sure, there had been problems in their relationship, Colin tended to simply drown himself in work, meaning she'd have to go out to town on her own, but he was a good guy, even if he had gotten rather angry at her for a small indiscretion.

Before she could answer, Colin continued speaking.

"Annabelle, is there something you forgot to tell me."

She was silent for a second. Before remembering. She hadn't actually ever told the guy about Sely. The break-up had been so bad…

Before she could reply, he spoke again.

"Because there's an abused fourteen year old in my house right now you bitch!"

"Wait, Sely's in Brockton Bay?" she replied. Every now and then, she'd kept up with his, Armsmasters, career. Roughly whenever Sely had started complaining about wanting a real dad. She could be so ungrateful. She hadn't told her her father was a superhero, simply saying he lived on the other side of the country had usually been enough to get her to drop the topic.

"Yes, so you can call off the fucking search and explain to me what happened."

"I… call of the search?"

"Yes! Because quite obviously, when your daughter is missing for several days, you start fucking looking for her!" He was shouting now, and she had to hold the horn of the phone away from her ear. "And then, could you please fucking explain to me why she has a black eye?"

"Look, the last couple of days have been really stressful, what with David being such an asshole, and I just didn't have the time to-"

He interrupted her "David? Who the fuck is David? Is he responsible for Sely getting hurt?"

"I, look, he's gone now okay, he won't be around anymore."

"Really? You dump in and you think everything is suddenly okay? Are you daft?"

"Look, I don't think you have any business asking stuff about my love life."

"Well, maybe you should've thought about that before not telling me I have a teenage daughter!"

The sentence was punctuated by the sound of a the phone smashing against the wall, and dropping to the floor.

All she could do was wonder how Sely had gotten all the way to Brockton Bay from Wyoming. She hadn't been gone for that long, right?


	3. Chapter 1,3

**Chapter 1.3**

"Well, I'm afraid it's not as easy as it may seem. Family law may not be my specialty, but I can tell you that much." Carol said. Right now, she didn't look all that much like a lawyer, instead wearing yoga pants and a slightly too large hoodie. It made sense. Not only had she been wearing her costume before getting home, it also mean that people wouldn't automatically notice who she was. Carol Dallon was not known for being shabbily dressed.

"But she lied to me, let… this…. Happen to her daughter, and didn't even notice she'd been on the road for what must have been several days. This is ridiculous!"

Carol sighed.

"Look, I know that, and you know that, but you need to look at it from the perspective of the court. She's lived with her mother all her life, and if what she told you is correct, the actual abuser has been removed from the situation."

"But she's a conniving lying bitch!"

"Yes, and she hasn't ever told you about your daughter either. Which means that there's no real connection between the two of you besides the genetic one. Plus, they don't have a good reason to believe you will be a better parent."

"Wouldn't the protectorate be able to help there? Show them that I'm reliable?"

"Possibly, but so would a fake job the PRT can provide. And remember, being a hero might not actually be a selling point. The hours would make you unreliable, you have a high risk of getting hurt on the job, especially factoring in that you're the type of guy to show up to every endbringer fight he can. Plus, even though its not something that happens often, there's still the risk of something happening to her because someone went after your civilian identity."

There was nothing that Colin hated more than feeling helpless, unable to do anything. He hated this. Hated everything involved with it. It reminded him of his own parents. Always working, never having the time to talk to him, to just spend some time. Their divorce had been… amicable, in a way. They just didn't care about each other enough to actually get angry.

In a way, he had felt insulted that his parents hadn't fought over him.

And now, it looked like he'd have to do the same thing to his own daughter, a girl he hadn't even known existed until earlier today, and he'd already failed her.

Carol interrupted his thought process.

"It's not all bad Colin. There's quite a few options, it's just that her staying her is not quite in the cards right now."

"So… what are the options?" he asked, his head still resting in his hands. He should've worked more on that legal simulation program he'd tried to build once, when trying to get out of a speeding ticket.

"Most important is probably visitation rights, and some sort of deal to get time with her during school vacations. It might not seem like much, but it means getting to know her better, and more importantly, her getting to know you. Then, in addition to that, we try to get more supervision on her mother, figure out whether or not this was an isolated incident, find out how Sely's doing in school, see if she's financially stable, that sort of thing. The real problem is that you're pretty much stuck here with your job, and she's not going to move, so a 50/50 split is never going to be accepted by a judge. So we improve your relationship with Sely, prove that you can provide stability and safety, and then pounce the moment her mother makes another mistake."

"That seems kind of… predatory." He replied. It was weird, hearing her talk about custody battles in the same way he'd heard her talk about how to take down people like Lung or Kaiser.

"It is, but it's the best case scenario for you and your little girl."

"Dare I ask?"

"Well, there's another way for you to quite easily get custody. The problem is that it involved something bad happening to her."

"A trigger event…"

"Exactly. None of us wants it to happen, but a trigger event is the one thing where you being a Protectorate cape actually helps in your favour, a lot. Does Westlake even have a Protectorate office?"

"A small one, if I remember correctly, one or two capes and a single civilian."

"In other words, were that to happen, bringing her to Brockton Bay where her father will be able to watch over her would be the optimal solution."

"Except for the fact that she'd first have to trigger."

"She's second generation, so it's more likely than not and it wouldn't necessarily be all that bad, but it's still not a happy thought."

"So, what about right now? What do I do?"

"Right now, we wait until Amy's done helping her out and documenting the injuries for the police report. Then, let her catch some sleep. Problem is, it's the middle of the week, so she has to go to school. You can probably smuggle in half a day or so, but it'd be a good idea to put her on the plane sometime tomorrow."

"And bring her back to Annabelle."

"To her mother and her home, yes, as much as that might mean right now."

*** Panacea ***

"So, how do you know my dad anyway?" The girl, Sely, asked.

It was hard, trying to figure out an excuse while getting a complete diagnosis and healing the girl.

"Ehhm, my mom knows him from work"

Smooth Amy, smooth. No way she'll figure out her father's secret identity this way.

"Oh, okay… So, what are you doing?"

"Right now? Healing you."

"Yeah, but, like, how? I mean, I felt the stuff with my eye but I don't feel what you're doing now."

"It's… a bit more complicated than that. Your eye was already healing, and bruises aren't that hard to fix, it's a matter of cleaning up. For the rest of your body, I have to actually figure out exactly what's wrong before healing it."

What she hadn't said, at least not yet, was that she wasn't just figuring out what's wrong in order to heal it.

There wasn't all that much wrong with the girl. No evidence of drugs or alcohol in her system. There was, however, some evidence of malnutrition. A lack of vitamins at some stages in her life. Nothing that would create any permanent problems. So enough food, but not healthy enough. Probably quite a bit of junkfood and microwave meals in her history.

Then there was the damage from the beating she'd sustained, roughly two or three days ago. A black eye, two broken ribs, a few of her teeth had come slightly loose. Several bruises over her torso, microfractures and another bruise on her left leg.

The only positive part of this was that she could detect the girl's DNA as well, and it matched Armsmaster's DNA. And of course the fact that she could heal her.

"Oh, yeah, feeling it now." Sely said. She was wearing some of her old clothes that she didn't fit anymore. Stuff from when she'd been fourteen. Her clothes had been completely soaked, and it had been a better alternative to the stuff Armsmaster had laid out.

"So, you can like, heal anything right?" The girl asked.

"Yeah…"

"Including trees?"

"Trees? Why would I heal trees?"

"Because, you know, what if they get sick?"

"I guess I could, but-"

"So, like, if a squirrel had a nest in the tree, like, if it was hollow, would you heal it closed?

"I don't think that really happens outside of cartoons."

"Yeah but, what if?"

"I'd think I'd put a squirrel above a tree…"

"You're a telekinetic too?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I meant by that."

Well, at least his daughter wasn't as dull as he was, still, why would anyone, except a crazy Nazi, heal trees?

"I cwan fwheel whou in mha mwhouth" Sely said.

"Yes, and it'd be a lot easier if you stopped trying to speak while I'm working."

"Chwan whou wheel wobotz?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that."

"Cause, like, in most games, you can just heal robots with normal healing stuff."

"In most games, you respawn after dying."

"Good point…"

"Well, I'm just about done." She said, standing up.

"Okay" Sely replied, letting out a yawn. "But I'm still tired."

"Sleep's in the brain, I don't do brains."

"S'that why you don't do trees?"

"I… How does that even compute?"

"Because, like, trees don't have separate brains, so maybe like their entire body is a brain?"

"You know what… Sure, that's why I don't do trees."

*** Sely ***

When I woke up, it took a while to figure out where I was.

Right, Brockton Bay, my dad's home.

Yesterday had been… weird.

First of all, it had turned out that he wasn't home. Which, you know, flaw in my plan.

Then, it had started snowing more and more.

Then, dad had come home.

Colin… I still wasn't quite sure what to think about him. He was a bit weird, but, better than mom.

And then that lawyer woman and her daughter, who was apparently a cape without a secret identity, which was apparently a thing here, had shown up. The woman, Carol, had been a lawyer that knew my dad from work. I wasn't quite sure what my dad did, but it was probably important if he knew lawyers. Plus, his home was pretty fancy.

"Are you awake yet?" someone asked. I properly opened my eyes, and saw I was lying on the couch under a nice warm blanket.

"No" I answered. The blanket was way too comfortable to wake up.

I heard dad walking, eventually stopping somewhere near my feet. He sat down, something in his hands.

"Well, if you're still sleeping, I'll have to eat these pancakes all on my own."

I smelled, not noticing a real pancake odour. Then, sat up a bit, and noticed that they looked like pre-baked store-bought ones. Not really pancakes. Blegh.

"What's gonna happen now?" I asked.

Ever since I'd decided to go hallway across the country, I hadn't really thought ahead. Going to find dad had been the goal, not figuring out a life plan.

He was silent for a bit, and looked at the ground in front of him instead of at me.

"I… had another talk with your mother. The guy that… you know… he's gone, and there's a warrant out for him. From what she tells me, he's probably already left the state. As for the rest… she wanted me to send you back as quickly as possible, or she'd report me for kidnapping you."

I.. what? Dad kidnapping me? That didn't even make sense. Which, you know, meant it'd fit my mom…

"Oh…"

"So I'm asking a friend of Carol, the woman that was here yesterday, to help me file a custody case"

"… Are you and mom going to get into a fight?"

He sighed. "I hope not, but, that's really up to her, so, probably yes…"

I wondered… was mom going to fight dad for me? I wasn't quite sure, but…

"…okay… So…"

"I got you a ticket for a flight back to Wyoming, You'll have to change flights in Denver, but the people from the airport will help with that."

Fuck…

I'd… expected it. Couldn't be this easy, but…

Fuck…

After a few seconds, he put his hand on my leg, or rather, on top of the part of the blanket that was covering my leg.

"Hey, don't get too depressed now. I still have fourteen years of birthday presents to make up for."

A small smile touched my lips… maybe today wouldn't be that bad…

*** Gadget ***

Today had been bad.

That was everything I could think about, soaring above the countryside.

It had started… okay. Dad had gotten me a laptop and a new phone, but when we were getting lunch, he'd gotten a call from work. Apparently, something had happened that meant he had to leave right away.

He'd given me some cash to continue shopping, but… there wasn't really anything I couldn't already get in other ways.

When he was done at work, it had been about time to go to the airport, because there was an increased security line. Some neo-Nazis had escaped from prison, and they were afraid some of them would try to escape the city. Of course, they had no idea who the Nazis actually were, so they just interrogated everyone for ten to fifteen minutes.

And, because apparently they had a little Nazi girl, I was included in the interrogations.

Fucking assholes asking whether or not I hated people who weren't me, of course I didn't, why would I give a shit about them one way or another? I didn't even know anyone in the city except for my dad.

And then, in addition to everything else, airplane food. Some sort of meat-like substance had gone from my plate straight into the little garbage can.

I looked out of the window. Below me, small lights glowed, showing civilisation. Every single one of those lights was a home, or a streetlight, or whatever… I guess it wasn't as poetic as I thought it'd be when I started on that…

On the other side, there was the sky, and a moonless night. It was filled with stars, each a thousand years away… I think. I was pretty sure I could see a satellite moving through the night sky, or was it an endbringer?

In a couple of hours, we'd arrive in Denver… then, a smaller plane back to Westlake…

And then I'd be back where I was four days ago. Stuck at home with mom, being selectively ignored or smothered. No-one would take me seriously… not even my dad.

There were a lot of stars out there though… up above me, to the sides, below me.

And there were these things… they were… big, and weird. It was like they were moving in a direction other than the normal ones every now and then. They, we, I, we were talking. Not talking, but, communicating. There was a distant orb, floating around a star, and we were talking about something. But now we like me and someone else, but more like, something which I was a part of.

It was beautiful in some sort of weird way, like something was intended to happen. And the stars…

"Do you want some tomato juice?" the Stewardess, but like, a man, would that be a Steward? Asked. I was pretty sure it wouldn't be a Steward. Stewards were something from fantasy novels and shit, not airplanes. So it was probably something else.

Wait, when had I fallen asleep? And, hadn't I been dreaming? I couldn't really remember the dream, but it'd been something big and important.

"Uh-huh…" I replied, sitting up again.

Mister Stewardess handed me the cup of juice. "Here you go little miss!"

This dude was way too happy.

I grabbed the cup, feeling the smooth cardboard-like substance under my fingers. It felt weird.

I took a sip, a big one, more of a gulp really. I was kind of thirsty. Then, when the glass was half-empty, or was that half-full? It started slipping from my fingers. I moved my hands, trying to grab it, but it fell… through my fingers? No, it wasn't falling down it was…

Where the fuck was the place where the cup had gone? I could feel it, the cardboard, the layer on the inside to keep the cardboard from getting soggy, the three different dyes they used for the airline logo…

And then the juice hit my legs. Whatever had happened to the cardboard cup, it hadn't happened to the tomato juice.

Almost immediately, the Stewardessir came by and started making a fuss, calling for another one of the airline people to go and bring more towels. It was weird, paper towels just weren't all that good at absorbing liquids from clothing, and it wouldn't even clean the clothes either. Some sort of sponge-like material would probably work better, give it a few adaptive sensors that made sure it wouldn't try and absorb the fibres of my clothes. It probably wouldn't work on spaghetti, but stuff like tomato juice would work. Except maybe it'd be hard to separate intended colouring from stuff that spilled on my clothes, and…

Wait, what was I thinking about? Why would I be making…

Weird… really really weird.


	4. Chapter 1,4

**Chapter 1.4**  
So if I removed the wires from the charger, I could use those to connect the camera and the drone, and then I could use the USB plug to connect it to my laptop. But, how'd I charge it then? Or should I just hope that the battery didn't run out? The stuff only existed for a few hours when I absorbed it, so that might work…

Now, instead, I could repurpose some of those wires… And if I plugged them directly into the photo-sensitive part of the camera… This could actually work. I'd need to figure out how to three-dimensionalize the data, but that was easily done with any computer.

The problem was, I needed proper tools before I could get started on good tech, but I needed tech to get my hands on some tools. My bed just wasn't a proper worktable.

"Sely!" a shout came from downstairs.

Another month, another asshole.

I threw the blanket on top of my project. I didn't want anyone to see it. Then, I made my way down. Henry wanted to bitch about something again, better to get it over with now.

When I was halfway down the stairs, mom chimed in.

"Sely get down here right now!"

I opened the door to the living room, and saw them sitting on the couch together, being all lovey-dovey.

"What? I was busy!" I replied.

"Sely, your mother and I just got a call from your school."

"What? You're finally gonna learn to read and write?"

"No I don't need to learn how to read and write Sely!" he shouted, his spit flying from his mouth in an arc. Mom gave him a hug, probably because she loved it when he was being an asshole or something. He seemed to calm down a bit from it.

"Coulda fooled me…" I mumbled under my breath.

"See, this is exactly the type of behaviour that gets you in trouble at school!" he shouted back.

"See, this is exactly the type of behaviour that gets you in trouble at school." I replied.

"Sely!" mother called out.

"What? I'm just saying, if he wants to finally finish high-school, he's gotta learn not to shout for no reason."

"That's it young lady, to your room!" she replied.

Good, that meant I could work on my stuff again. I wanted to say it was just as I planned, but, it wasn't. Henry'd probably already forgotten what he even wanted to ask. The idiot. I walked back upstairs, ignoring mom, who yelled something about dinner. Instead, I could finish my drone. Or, rather, finish modifying my neighbour's drone. Whatever, it's not like he really missed it anyway.

The drone had been my biggest project so far. I had two other tools ready and made, but both of them were much smaller. They'd been easier to make too, for some reason. I wasn't sure how that worked. When making them, the ideas just flowed, I'd quickly figured out what I was doing, how stuff would work. Now, I had to try and mix and match to get the damn thing below the maximum weight, and keep it flying stable.

I'd grabbed some stuff from the router to try and get real-time feedback, but it turned out that the modifications I'd done to get infrared wall-vision were interfering with the antenna somehow.

So now I'd have to use either a cable or mobile internet, until I took the time to fix the thing again.

On the other hand, having no good internet access meant mom was spending most of her time at Henry's place, so bonus there.

It took me a couple of hours, but at the end of the night, I was relatively sure that my scouting drone was done.

It was a work of art. Not, like, classical renaissance painting art, mind you. It was more in the category of upside down urinal art. But it worked, and that was what was important.

Even better, I'd found a way around my big restriction. Rather than having to program it once and then being stuck in that state, It had to be connected to a computer through a USB-port, after which point I could put a program on it, telling it where to scout.

You see, I'd done some research online. There's this site called Parahumans Online, which made sense, because it was about Parahumans, that is, people with magic powers, and it was a website, meaning it was online.

Now, powers were classified in different categories. There was one for shooting people with stuff like laser-eyes, there was one for flying or being really fast, stuff like that. Mostly, I thought that stuff was rather useless. If someone had lightning powers, he should be described as "lightning powers", not something bullshit like barbarian 3 explosion 2 shaking 4. It'd be way more logical to just make it like a lightning category.

But, the moment I informed people of that, like a million angry nerds suddenly posted that I was stupid. And then someone pretending to be people's mom smashed them with a hammer.

The one useful thing I found was what tinkers were. Tinkers, unlike the other categories, made sense. A tinker had the magical ability to make awesome technology, even though he or she never learned how to.

Me, I was a tinker. Sure, other people had devices for going through locked doors, but those broke the door, or took time. Me, I had my unlocker, just a tiny metal tube that scanned a lock and replicated the key, immediately opening it. Take that hypothetical lightning wizards.

But, the thing was, everyone said tinkers were always just tinkers. If a tinker had a shooting power, that was because he had a gun.

Which was a silly idea, because then every cop would be a cape, because guns.

So, I'd figured out that I was extra awesome. I wasn't just a tinker, I also had a power that wasn't on the list. At least, I didn't see it.

I could make stuff disappear, and then make it reappear. Like the cup of juice from the airplane.

Except not.

The disappearing part was correct. I could grab something, use my power, and it'd disappear into thin air.

Well, not quite. At least, I hadn't checked. It'd disappear, but I had no idea whether it turned into air or not. Maybe I could go swimming underwater. Just make stuff disappear to get air. Maybe I would drown. Probably the second with my luck.

So, after it disappeared, I could still feel it. Like there was this room somewhere in my head, filled with, well, whatever I had absorbed. But, It wasn't really a storage room or something. It was more like a tiny factory, creating whatever I'd absorbed, exactly in the way it was when I absorbed it.

Like the new phone dad had gotten me. In a moment of stupidity, I'd absorbed it. Now, every time I called it forth. The battery was at exactly 73%, I had one new message, and the Facebook app was in the middle of updating.

And it wasn't like I could just reabsorb an updated phone either. That was the entire problem. My power didn't work on the stuff I'd called forth. It was just there, and then, after a few hours, it'd disappear again.

The only good part was that my little mind-factory slowly created more of them, which meant I had multiples. Right now, for example, I could just grab my phone three times. The little cardboard cup I could get seven of.

So, my plan was to use one power to create stuff, and then use my magical mind-factory to use it. The only problem being that I couldn't change it after absorbing it. If I wanted a newer version, I'd have to start from scratch.

Feeling confident, I absorbed the drone. All of a sudden, I could feel it. The propellors, the battery, but especially the stuff I'd worked on was clear. It made sense, I guess. I recognized what was in there because I'd made it.

Now I"d only need to finish the program to complete my preparations. Tomorrow evening, I could launch my scouting drones. Then, the day after, I would be able to finally get some proper tools.

School had been nice and comfortable, I'd been able to sleep in at least half my classes, the only real problem being English. I was pretty sure the English teacher was a friend of Henry's, and the dude was getting on my case. My book-report had been perfectly fine. I'd explained how 1984 was a book, how it was released in 1948 which was a stupid coincidence or just a bad joke, and how it didn't matter anyway because Oceania had always been at war with the endbringers. Or something like that. I just didn't really see the point in books that were supposed to be about the future but didn't have magic in them, like capes weren't a thing that would be really important in the future.

I was pretty sure Alexandria could just punch the ministry of Truth anyway, but apparently that was something that "You should keep in your world issues class".

When I got home again, mom wasn't there. She was probably at Henry's place, being all gross.

I grabbed some food from the fridge, and started finishing the program for the drone. I was almost done after spending all of last night working on it.

About halfway through finishing the final lines of code, I decided to look at PHO some more. The discussion about the fight, and subsequent escape, that had almost made me late for my flight back to Wyoming had been going on for a month now. Everyone disagreed on what had happened, some people saying it was space-lizards, others saying it was just normal cape-stuff.

The rest of the world was also discussing stuff. Most interesting was a small scandal about a wizard called Myr-somethingsomething. Someone had told him that he couldn't tell people he was a wizard, and he had proclaimed that he was, in fact, a wizard.

This made sense. He had magic powers, a grey beard, a staff, a robe and an awesome hat.

But, as always, PHO was filled with idiots, who didn't quite understand how logic worked. It wasn't magic, because they were somehow a completely different kind of supernatural powers that wasn't magic.

The last bit of info was about a cap that made drugs somewhere, but, like, not normal drugs, but more like also normal drugs. The stories were weird, but winged one said it was a big deal, and she usually knew what was up.

So, tonight, I would launch my drone into the world. There, it would go to the mall, about two blocks over, and start scanning the local hardware & electronics warehouse, noting guard patrols, camera's, hidden compartments, and giving me a 3-D map of the area.

If my backprojection algorithm worked at least, but it probably would.

Getting hungry, I went downstairs. No mom, no Henry. Maybe they'd turned into zombies and were running around the streets looking for brains. That'd be fun. Or maybe a radioactive cheerleader bit them, and they were wearing pompons and running around the high school sports field.

Could I turn people radioactive? I was pretty sure powers didn't work that way. I had, as far as I knew, not been bitten by a radioactive piece of technology, but that Aleph cape kept saying he got bit. They made several movies about them too, so the guy had to be at least somewhat trustworthy.

So, what if all cheerleaders were already bitten by radioactive zombie cheerleaders? Girls like Emma fit the bill there. But then again, there weren't any capes before the eighties, and cheerleaders, and thus zombies, were around before that.

That, and I still couldn't find anything but a note from mom. It said she was going out to eat with Henry, and that I'd have to eat the pizza in the fridge. It also said that I should pay more attention in school and that a D for English was terrible. Not understanding, of course, that the only terrible thing around was my English teacher.

The problem with microwave pizza, however, is that it needs to be microwaved. Normally, such a thing would not be a problem. Today, however, it happened to be the day after the day that I had decided that those emitters would be really really useful for my project.

Cooking on the stove it was then.

I turned on the gas, and within a second, it clicked on, and the blue flames appeared. I placed a big open pan on top of it, and added my still frozen pizza Hawaii. Of course, it wasn't actually authentically Hawaiian. If so, it'd be baked above an active volcano, not on the stove.

Maybe Hawaii had a volcano cape, one that could just run his own restaurant with his powers. Or would that be racist, volcano capes from the volcano islands? Maybe there were lots of volcano capes in places that didn't have volcanoes. Maybe the English teacher was secretly a cape that had the ability to have complete and total control over all volcanoes within a hundred miles, only he didn't know because there were no volcanoes around.

The internet, of course, would know the answer. Running back upstairs, I grabbed my laptop and opened PHO again, searching for Volcano powers.

With that, I only found some stuff about a guy called Ash Beast in Africa, not in Wyoming, and he was more a volcano himself, instead of a volcano controller. Then, another search about people not knowing they had powers.

Nothing either on that, but that made sense. If they didn't know they had powers, then they wouldn't know to post online that they didn't know they had powers. Maybe it'd help if I created a post about it. People could post in it if they thought they had powers they didn't know about. Like, if they suspected they had powers but didn't know what they were.

A minute or so, I looked at my work.

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**Topic: Unknown Powers**

 **In: Boards ► General ► Powers ► General Power Discussion**

 **Arcane_Fox** (Original Poster)

Posted on March 5, 2010:

So, does anyone know if there are, like, people with powers that don't know they have powers? For example, if someone could control Uranium, but there was never any Uranium around, or if someone could to telekinesis on Lava but it didn't matter because there weren't any volcanos?

Cause, I was wondering, would it be racist to say that volcano capes are only in Hawaii, because maybe they're everywhere but mostly they just don't know?

Is Ash Beast from Hawaii? 

That looked about right. Clear and concise. Something was off though. It smelled wei-

My pizza.

I jumped down the stairs, barely avoiding a fall on the floor. Luckily, it wasn't on fire. The entire thing was black , which really really sucked.

Not in the racist way, but in the can't eat it way. Not that you could eat black people, but…

Well, that had been a quick dinner at least. Turning of the fire, I made my way back to my room. I still had quite a few well-hidden snacks lying around somewhere.

Now, to get back to the whole programming deal. I grabbed my laptop, and started finishing my code. It took about an hour, and it had gotten dark outside.

I reached out to the back of my mind, and checked. Over the day, my power had built up, generating the drone. I could feel I had two copies available to me, and it didn't seem to be going to increase.

Only two, not as much as I'd expected. Sure, it was big, but it was also my tech. Generally speaking, it seemed like I had less of the big stuff, and more of the small stuff. The little cup that had been the first thing I'd absorbed, I could create seven of right now. My lockpicking tool, taking the form of a small short metal rod, slightly larger and a bit heavier than the cup, I had five of.

Was it because half the drone was just something someone else had bought in a store? Or was it really just almost too big?

I grabbed the both of them, and connected the first to my laptop through the USB port. Within a minute, I had its target programmed in, and it flew off through the window, into the night sky.

The second, I gave the same target, but a different approach. That way, I could combine their data. Hopefully.

Now the waiting game had begun.

I checked PHO, no-one had replied yet. It hadn't been too long, but you usually got replies within half an hour on the big boards. Everyone was probably too embarrassed and didn't want to let on that they didn't know.

I tried surfing around a bit more, checking the less famous sites as well, and eventually settled on catching up on the Westlake cape scene. As little as there was of it anyway.

As far as I could see, there were four capes in the city. Five if I counted myself. The most famous of them was probably Rodeo. He had this weird power that was sort of a really subtle mind control thing. The reason he was famous, was because he often got called in to places all around the country to guide large groups of people in the right direction. Stuff like potential riots and things like that. He dressed himself as a cowboy for some reason, with a cool hat, spurs that looked like they were made of plastic, a cool duster, and, apparently, a fake cigar. He was a part of the Protectorate, but not really someone who fought people. The only reason he was stationed here was that he was a local, and he'd get called away to other cities all the time anyway.

Then there was Skip, a little girl that was probably about ten years old or something. Really young for a ward. What her power did was turn everything she touch into a trampoline. So, if she bounced on the ground, she'd go higher and higher, but if someone shot her, it bounced off of her somehow.

And, of course, there was Horn. A vigilante. Everyone in town knew about him, because he'd been in the news. He used to be part of the Protectorate, and last year, he'd gone to South America to fight Leviathan. He'd caught some attention there, and something had happened, and he'd decided to leave the Protectorate. Then, some lawyer had claimed that the name Horn was copyrighted or something, and Horn had disagreed with him.

Horn was, by far, the biggest dog in town. Unlike Rodeo, who couldn't really hurt anyone directly, Horn had super-strength. He had these, well, horns, that he could grow. Somewhere between rhino-horns and brambles. They were really sturdy, and the more of them he had, the stronger he got. Only, he was also kind of slow, because the horns were really heavy. He'd used his powers on the second floor of the elementary school once, and fallen straight through the floor. At least that's what the word at school was.

We also had our very own supervillain. Hallucca. A crazy witch that seemed to warp reality around her. Stuff changed almost randomly around her. One car splitting into two, buildings becoming all Eschery, lampposts and clothing starting to melt. She was weird, and whenever she decided to go out and attack people, there'd be a whole lot of property damage. People were usually all right though. She couldn't really hurt them I think, it said something about a guy called Manton online, which meant that she couldn't.

Then, of course, last but most certainly not least, there was the greatest of them all, the famous master criminal Gadget, famous for being so stealthy that no-one ever caught her in the act.

You know, as long as tomorrows heist worked out.

***

I had a big black hoodie, baggy pants, black shoes, black gloves, and last but most certainly not least, a big black scarf wrapped around my head.

I also had a perfect 3-D model of my target, including the locations of all the security cameras, a point of entrance, and the location of the hidden safe in the manager's office.

And then, I had the tools of my trade, ready at my beck and call just outside of the material world.

Five lockpicking devices

Four loopers, launchers with small chips that would attach to a digital camera and create a, well, loop.

Two drones, ready to, well, they wouldn't be very useful here.

I also had a couple of phones, which I could throw at people or something. Also some other random stuff. A pen, which, as it turned out, was completely useless, given that the ink disappeared after a few hours, as well as Henry's credit-card. Which wasn't as useful as you'd think, because he'd reported it stolen almost immediately.

I guess maybe if I got really lucky I could throw it like the James Bond guy. Probably not though.

And, of course, several copies of a big burlap sack, for carrying the loot that I couldn't just absorb.

I looked at my target. A small fire escape on the second floor. It was easy enough to climb up, and I let down the stairs so I could make a quick escape if necessary. Looking around, I could see a streetlight in the distance, but no-one would be able to see me from the main road.

My heart was beating in my throat. This was it. I grabbed a lockpicker, and placed it on the keyhole of the fire escape. Within seconds, the tiny metal tools in the device came out, and I could swing the door open. Happy to get away from the small metal ledge, I found myself in the manager's office.

Was that normal? Putting the fire escape in the manager's office? Or was it mostly just because the manager was afraid of fire so he made sure he had an escape route?

Almost immediately, I spotted the camera, aimed at the other door of the office, as well as the desk. Time for my second gadget.

It was basically a tiny catapult, with a smart chip inside it, that would reroute whatever video-thing it was attached to. It was really useful, except for when used on anything that wasn't a video-system. If it contained sound, it would probably not work perfectly, but without sound? It'd find a perfect loop and just repeat that until the chip disappeared, after which there'd be no evidence.

Four of them, that was what I had here. After that, I'd need to wait one or two hours before the next one appeared. I'd tried to check, but it didn't seem like there was a specific amount of time or anything like that.

I aimed, shot, and missed, the little chip falling to the floor beneath the camera.

I grabbed another, and aimed higher, hopefully high enough to counteract the drop.

I shot, and hit. I could see one or two sparks coming from the little chip, and then the camera suddenly stopped doing anything.

Taking a better look around, I saw one of the things I'd been looking for standing on the manager's desk. A see-through monitor, some sort of transparent LCD-thing. I grabbed it, and put it in the lootbag. It wasn't that I needed a new monitor, it was that the materials inside of the high-end thing would really help in making a HUD. I could probably figure out some way to bend the "glass" into a better shape, then rework it a bit, it was just plain amazing.

It was also rather heavy, but whatevs. Most of the stuff I'd come for I could just absorb. After all, they were only tools, not materials. Materials themselves were best stolen normally, instead of using my power for it.

After loading the big screen in my bag, and dropping the bag under the desk, I went for the wall-mounted safe. It was tastefully hidden behind a calendar with a picture of some adorable little penguins.

At which point I stumbled across a problem. The safe was electrical, containing a small number pad. That wasn't something I'd planned for.

My unlockers would work on almost any lock, that's how I'd designed them, but it had to be an actual lock for them to work…

Shitsnacks.

Well, it was about time for me to get to the real crux of the matter. The main store.

I opened the second door, the one leading out of the managers office, into the store proper. It ended on a small balcony from which the manager could overlook the store, and his workers. It was also, luckily, not watched by any cameras. I knew where I had to go to get what I wanted. And I knew which cameras I needed to disable for that. I hadn't thought about what would happen when I missed, so I'd have to give up on one or two things that'd be out of reach, but I could get at least two thirds of the stuff I'd been looking for.

Aiming carefully this time, I hit both the cameras in my path. Then, I made my way down through the semi-dark store. My second loot-bag, I filled with small stuff. Batteries, wires, nuts and bolts, basically anything I could easily grab and that would be useful as a raw material. My real target however, was the tools. Mostly stuff with batteries. Sure, it'd suck if they went empty for a normal person. For me, I could just create a new one. I grabbed saws, drills, hammers, a miniature leaf-blower, a tiny vacuum that would help in keeping my workspace clean, and would probably create a small dust explosion when it disappeared, a few mechanical rulers, lots of fun stuff. They even had a smallish chainsaw I could blueprint. Sure, I probably wouldn't get more than one at a time, but one would probably be enough.

I was careful to stay out of sight of the still working cameras, so I couldn't get absolutely everything I wanted, but I did manage to sneak by the cashier's place to grab some of the candy they had.

All in all, it'd probably taken me about half an hour. Once, the guard had patrolled outside the store, in the hallways of the mall proper, but I'd calculated his patrol routes from yesterday, so I could easily hide while he was walking by.

I made my way back upstairs, taking care not to whistle too loudly, when I heard a voice coming from outside.

I looked into the manager's office, and quickly saw I'd left the door outside open. The voice coming from outside sounded drunk.

Drunk and old.

Thinking quickly, I made a dash for the manager's desk, hiding beneath it, next to my other lootbag.

"C'mon dolly, it'll be a big tickle. We'll grab some dough, maybe find something more to drink." A croaky voice said.

"I don't know Don, sounds dangerous." A woman said, trying to sound young.

"Don't be such a cube darling." Another man said.

There were quite a few of them, and I could hear them walking up the stairs of the fire escape, into the room. Half the time, I had no idea what they were saying, as there speech was all slurred, like mom after a bad breakup. Also, they spoke in old people slang, about people not having a cow or rattlesnakes. It was weird.

The weirdest part, however, was when I felt something crash on top of the desk I was hiding under. The desk had a closed back, so they couldn't see me, but…

It wasn't some object they'd thrown on top of the desk. It was one of the Dollies, some old woman that couldn't have been younger than eighty from the sound of her rheumatic bones.

Now sure, old people sitting on top of my hiding space was bad. Problem was, it got worse, as she started necking with someone. It was absolutely, completely, disgusting, especially since, after a few minutes, I could hear the woman tell the guy to calm down because her dentures were coming loose.

I desperately needed some sort of ear-plug technology, because this was far too much information.

Luckily, most of them had decided to go downstairs into the store itself.

Or, maybe, not luckily. They wouldn't know to keep within the area that wasn't covered by the remaining cameras. The guard would see them, the cops would arrive, and then… Well, sure, the old people would be arrested, but so would I.

Trying as hard as I could not to think about the people reliving their youth on top of me, I focussed on the other sounds. It was mayhem. The old people were shouting and throwing stuff. I could hear glass breaking, and big thuds that had to be large things falling over.

Eventually, they started to leave. For some reason, however, they weren't leaving through the fire escape. Instead, they were walking to the store.

Once the people on top of me went after them, I checked. The old people had broken open the iron flaps keeping the store-front closed, and were going into the mall proper. However, they had left total carnage behind. Where I had been stealthy, they had gone on a rampage. Power tools had been thrown around while they were turned on, half the computer screens and tv's had been thrown on the floor, and someone had set a fire in the corner of the store. I made my way down there, checking to see where the octogenarian horde had gone.

When I was halfway to the entrance, the fire alarm went off. Just what I needed, sprinklers.

It was time to get out, so I'd go outside of the store and leave through the front entrance.

Except… there was a fire. Fire escape…. I had to use the fire escape I was pretty sure, it was what I'd been planning for. Why did I want to take the front as an exit instead? It made sense, it was logical, but… I couldn't help but feel like I was forgetting something.

As I thought about it, I started to get wet. I needed to get out of here now, if I wanted to safe some of the electronics I'd taken. I ran back up, into the manager's office, to grab the two bags of loot I'd gathered. Then, I made my way to the fire escape, downstairs into the alley.

At the front of the mall, one street over, I could see the police siren light thingies. The cops had arrived. I could count myself lucky that I'd decided to take the fire escape rather than the front exit like those, well, old people. They'd be in custody right around now, and I didn't think I could have fought my way out of a complete surround. Given the scale of the operation, it was even possible that Rodeo was there.

Rodeo… of course…

I had to get away from this place, and no matter what I thought, I had to do it by moving away from all those cops.


	5. Chapter 2,1

**Gadget 2.1**

The Nuclear Nursing Home, The Grandfather Gang, The Repeat of the Roaring twenties.

I guess newspapers really like to use alliteration in their headlines. I couldn't blame them, really. The last newsworthy event that happened in Westlake and its surroundings was Horn leaving the protectorate over PR concerns. The guy covered himself in massive horn-like growths, and appearantly, some idiot from New York had come down and told him that he was "too intimidating", and that he should dial down his power-use so that he wouldn't scare the children or something. Horn, logically, didn't want to work for an organization that forbade him from using his power to make himself bulletproof with a full covering. When I looked him up on PHO, it said that there was still a big lawsuit around the use of his cape identity, with the PRT saying that "Horn", the costume, and all related merchandise belonged to them, and Horn saying that copyrighting his "costume", that being, his natural growths covering his body, was akin to copyrighting someone's face and forcing them to get plastic surgery.

In comparison to that little kerfluffle, the local journalists were having a field day. Every paper, magazine and blog in the state wanted to cover the event, and I was pretty sure they were competing for the cringiest title.

Now at first, I was happy with this turn of events. With all the press going after the drugged up seniors, there would be less attention on my own illegal activity on that same night.

And I say at first, because it took a few hours until the consequences of last nights events found me. I had planned to spend the entire weekend tinkering with my completely legitimate acquisitions, but Henry disagreed. I wasn't even half done with my breakfast (sure, it was 1:00 PM, but it was my first meal of the day so technically breakfast) when he came charging into the living room, deactivated the TV, and shoved an expensive looking video-camera into my hands.

"It's a scoop Sely, a scoop! This is our ticket to the big time!" he said, his eyes glistening with glee. "Finish your breakfast and get in the car, you're going to help me cover the events of last night for my blog!"

Oh great… Another of my mom's boyfriends trying to pull me into some sort of bonding exercise. Still, it was better than a trip to the creation museum, followed by being forced into an insane Sunday School. (Are ParaHumans the devil trying to trick us into believing Scion isn't a lizard from the New World Order? Yes they are apparently.) And if I played my cards right, I might be able to hang on to this camera. I wouldn't have paid any attention to it before, but I could already see that it had some very interesting components inside it that I just had to get my hands on. Still, investigating my own crime, it seemed like something out of a sitcom.

"Are you sure Henry? I thought the news had it covered pretty well? It's not a scoop if it's already on TV isn't it?"

"No no no, see, these traditional media people? They don't have the right eye for this. You got to look behind the crime to see the real story. Trust me, I know a guy in security, and if he says he has a scoop, he has a scoop, now come quickly! We could get on Oprah and show the world that traditional media is dead!" He said. Seriously? Getting on Oprah would show people that TV-shows were irrelevant? Was Henry on the same thing those seniors were? Still, it didn't look like I was getting out of this one.

***Gadget***

A short car-ride later, we stood in front of the police tape at the front of the store. I'd somehow figured out how to work the camera (was that part of my techno-magical powers? Knowing how stuff works? I'd definitely gotten better at finding the right settings in my phone lately.) and was filming Henry, who was enthousiastically babbling at the camera.

"Hello viewers, this is Henry Watson, your news reporter from Wyoming News…. Dot Blogspot Dot org. I am here at the Martin Luther memorial shopping centre in Westlake, where a small town was violently shaken up by a marauding gang of menacing and mature drug-addicts. According to the police, a local parahuman villain by the name of Hallucca sold a special drug at the local nursing home, after which the seniors went crazy and left to go on a rampage through town. At least that's the "official" story. (Wow, he was actually making air quotes on camera, was he serious?) My sources tell me that something far more sinister is going on in the town of Westlake, and that this outbreak of violence was only a means to distract the state from a deeper evil! Okay I think we got that on tape, you can stop filming now Sely, we need to move somewhere else to actually show people the truth, and we'll do some fancy jumpcuts in movie-maker tonight. No seriously Sely you can put the camera away, we're done here. Hey, are you paying attention to me Sely? I said we're done here you can turn the camera off. Cut Sely, you can Cut the feed."

I, of course, wasn't quite paying attention, because I wasn't filming Henry anymore, I was actually aiming right over his shoulder. In the middle of the ruined store, I saw Rodeo, Skip and Horn. Rodeo and Horn seemed to be in a verbal argument. Skip, a girl of about 11 years old, was bouncing in place, somehow having used her magic on the floor to make it all elastic, and getting higher with every jump. Her costume Consisted of a light blue helmet, with tinted glass covering her eyes and nose, the only visible feature being the nervous smile on her face. Her costume was a big blue wintercoat, lined with fake orange fur, and covered with orange spring-like symbols, that seemed to move in tune with her jumps. I wasn't quite sure whether it was some sort of optical illusion or tinkertech, but it looked really cool. Her feet were covered in knee-high boots, reinforced with steel, the press releases said that that was to make sure she always landed feet-first, but they also looked like they could deliver a mean kick to the face. Then, she had some sturdy pants covering everything between the end of the boots and the beginning of the coat, boots and pants being orange with blue springs instead, the color scheme slowly going from orange at the bottom, to blue at the top.

Rodeo, who, on second thought, was probably responsible for my weird behaviour last night, was dressed like a stereotypical cowboy. He even had a magic lasso, that got bigger whenever he needed it to. I'd seen movies on the internet showing him catching twelve people in one throw, the rope extending in mid-air. On second thought, It was probably tinkertech. I should try to steal it and figure out how it works.

Horn, in the meantime, was covered in his trademark (and copyrighted) horns, Gnarly white growths covering his entire body, making him bulky, but strong and sturdy too. Even better, he had started walking away, right toward us. It took a while, but when he was nearly there, Henry turned around at what I was filming and noticed him too. He grabbed his microphone, held it up, and tried to get a reply out of Horn.

"Good day mister Horn, I'm Henry Watson for Wyoming news dot blogspot dot org. Do you have some time for our viewers?

Horn looked at Henry, then at me, then at Henry again. "Look sir, I don't have time for your news outlet. I'm sure your work is important, but I have real criminals to catch. If you're here for a silly little fluff piece, you can talk to Rodeo instead." He replied, before walking away grumpily. I filmed him leaving the mall through the front gate, having some troubly fitting all his growths through the door, and stopped recording. When I turned around to look at Henry, I expected him to be sad that he didn't get an interview. Instead, he was incredibly giddy.

"Did you hear that Sely? He called our work important! And he said that there's a real criminal to track down, that must mean I was right about my hunch! There is something more to this!" he said.

"Hunch? I thought you knew a guy who had a scoop?"

"Details details Sely, make this your first lesson as a news reporter, always follow your instincts. Anyway, have you noticed that none of the news channel had security footage to show us? That can only mean one thing, namely that there was no security footage. Why was there more security footage? Because there's more going on then they're telling us. Now let's go find someone in security and ask to see the tapes!"

Before leaving, I took one last look at the crime-scene. Rodeo was with some firemen looking at the area where the fire had started. Skip, meanwhile, was in the corner near the door to the managers office, jumping up to try and get at the security camera there. A security camera that I had deactivated only last night. Still, my looper should have poofed away by now, but could they still find traces of it?

"Sely, you coming?" Henry called, looking at me from above while leaning over a railing on the second floor. I ran to the stairs, hoping they wouldn't be able to find anything that would incriminate me. Time to see if Henry had found anything. He'd been correct, of course, but that didn't make him a good reporter. I hadn't shot half the camera's in the store when I was there, they just hadn't released the footage to the public yet.

*** Gadget ***

Okay, so, somehow, Henry had bribed and schmoozed his way through three layers of security, and here we were, in the security room, watching the looped footage from last night. One wall was covered in television screens, with a desk and a nervous security agent in front of them. The other side of the room had a standing drawer, with several trophies on top. Some of them were obviously from the security guard's children, for sport events participated and things like that, but I also saw a couple of trophies for "most secure mall in Wyoming". Something that definitely wasn't true anymore. Now mind you, we weren't the only people in the room watching the footage. I was trying to film, while, right next to me, Skip was nervously bouncing in place, obviously slightly bored and still shaken from the fight between Rodeo and Horn. Her power made the ground where I was standing elastic, making it difficult for me to stand still and keep the camera level. On the other side of her, Rodeo and the police chief were discussing the footage, as well as a specific lack of footage.

"Look, I told you, I used my power on the entire building, everyone inside was inspired to leave the building through the front entrance. We caught all of them, and they're simply lying about not knowing why the door was open or some of the camera's hacked." Rodeo said, obviously trusting in his own magics. He hadn't realized that I had indeed been inspired to leave the building, but that the fire alarm had partly woken me up and allowed me to take the fire exit instead.

"So, what you're saying is, you think one of these Seniors had access to a spare key, and was able to hack into the security consoles in order to put a loop on half the camera's in the store? Do capes even come in 80 year old versions?"

Then, Skip spoke up, her voice painfully squeaky. "Look I toldya, there's a small dent on the cameras, they hacked the cams, not the console, I swear." Darn, she was, painfully enough, pretty much correct.

On that, Henry saw his chance, he gestured for me o aim my camera at him, and tried to interview Skip. "Well then young lady, could you tell our viewers what you think about this exciting new supervillain in the proud city of Westlake?"

Skip looked at Henry, then at the camera, a nervous look on her face. That seemed to be a repeating pattern, the girl was always nervous about something. Before she could answer, however, Rodeo stepped in front of the camera, an angry look on his face.

"Look, that's enough, its time for you two to leave. This is a crime-scene. We have one supervillain selling high-tech pills to seniors, and another randomly deactivating cameras. Please leave us to our jobs and get out of here, there will be a press release in the evening."

With that, it was clear it was time for us to leave. Still, Henry's mood seemed to be the polar opposite of mine. He had his scoop, confirmation from the protectorate that there was a new villain in town. Me, I had my own problem. I commit one little theft and the protectorate is already on my heels. While walking out, I kept my left hand in my pocket, covering the only good thing that came from this little outing. A little medal that said "Best Security 2009".


	6. Chapter 2,2

**Gadget 2.2**

Used to be, I was uninterested in school. The stuff you learned in Biology or Math just wasn't as interesting as the stuff you find on the internet or in books. Plus, doodling in your notebook is just way more interesting than actually paying attention to a teacher.

Keyword: used to be.

These days, school was interesting. Not that I could pay attention to lessons, but at least it was interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I couldn't pay any attention. Take Mr. Smith's Biology class for example. Sure, it might not seem very interesting to learn that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. But it was inspiring. You see, the problem with most technology is that it needs a power source. So if you want to make something small, you're limited by the fact that you still need to include a battery. But in the body, every single cell could produce energy for itself. It still needed to get food from outside, but turning that into energy it could do on its own.

I could probably tinker up something like that. My first project was a helmet. If I wanted to be a respected cape, I needed a cool costume. Thus, I start with the helmet, the most important part of a costume.

I still had the see-through screen from the manager's office. I could probably bend the glass in that to make an awesome face-screen, making it opaque from the other side, and giving me an awesome HUD. I just had to make sure that the screen could communicate with a computer, and was self-sufficient. The best solution would be to create individual pixels that drew energy from a magnetic field that also supplied them with information on what images to show, but to do that I would have to build it from the ground up, for which I didn't have the materials, tools, or experience. I could, however, create an intermediate effort with the screen I now had, supplying energy from a separate battery and processing unit. By making it modular, I could upgrade the software and power source without having to build a new helmet. After all, I couldn't change my designs after absorbing it into my gadget-space.

And that's what I meant with still not being able to pay attention. Mr Smith was talking about RNA now, and I simply had no idea what that was. Is it some kind of new magical DNA that only occurs in people with powers? Does it have something to do with helixes? Helixes were amazing, I could create a helical double coil of copper to create a coil-gun, allowing me to quickly accelerate a projectile and shoot it at someone without using gun-powder. Instead, electricity was what it used, but that still didn't bring me any closer to figuring out just what Mr Smith was talking about.

"Well then everybody, it's time to do a group exercise, it shouldn't be hard if you paid any attention. I am going to put you into groups of four, and you'll have to write a short paper on DNA, how it can duplicate, and what it does. I'm selecting the groups, because you'll have to learn with people you don't like as much too."

Oh Golly, a group assignment from Mr Smith. Of course it shouldn't be that hard, you know, if you had a PhD in homework.

***Gadget***

"Did you guys hear about the mall" Emma said, her shrill little voice hurting my ears. Emma was your typical mall-rat cheerleader bullshit girl. Probably. We didn't really interact much, but she had long platinum blonde hair and an actual rack so it was probably true.

"Yeah, those old people were like, crazy hardcore. It's so cool what they did, shoving a middle finger to the establishment." That was Gary. Gary was your stereotypical Goth kid from ten years ago. Like someone made a statistical analysis of all Goth kids in the US, and what came out was Gary. He wore black lipstick, had emo hair covering one eye. (I could develop a small eye-lens that shifted the wavelength of incoming light. He'd be able to see in a wavelength that went right through his hair, which meant that I was losing focus again and needed to pay attention.)

"So why doesn't Rodeo just arrest Hallucca? I mean, we know she's behind this shit right?" That was Percy, I didn't know much about Percy, except that he was obviously an Armsmaster fan. He was wearing an Armsmaster hoody, underneath which I could see an Armsmaster T-shirt. He was wearing normal jeans, but finished his outfit with green glowing Eidolon shoes. Colour co-ordination was not his superpower.

"Because she's like crazy strong right?" Emma replied, looking at the rest of us for confirmation.

"It's not that she's strong, it's that her magic causes collateral damage." I butted in. True, as far as I could tell. Hallucca had the ability to create powerful apparitions and warp buildings and space around her. What kept her minor league, was that she didn't seem to have a lot of control over this power. "Both Rodeo and Horn could probably beat her, but it'd probably destroy everything in the vicinity."

They all looked at me as if I was some sort of cape geek. What the hell, I'm not the one decked in Armsmaster gear. Eventually, Gary replied: "That's like, so depressing, like a phyrrnicious victory or something right? Really shows you how useless life is."

"Ugh, so depressing, lets talk about something fun guys." Emma replied, obviously just as annoyed with Gary as I was. Seriously, were Goths even a thing anymore?

"Yeah, lets talk about something fun, like our homework assignment, you know, the reason we're in the library?" Percy said, his voice half dripping with sarcasm. We'd come here after school to get started on the homework assignment, but had been discussing it for fifteen minutes without actually breaching the topic. We'd gotten a study room, but nothing more. I really didn't want to do homework. Maybe I could write an algorithm to do my homework for me. Search the internet for a topic, look at the context a word is used in, then automatically create a short description from use cases. I could probably program it into the helmet I was going to make the moment I had some free time, and I should probably start focussing on the assignment so that I would actually have some free time.

I looked up from my notebook where I had started writing down some basic algorithms unconsciously. If we kept blabbering on about this stuff we would never get done. I stood up, went to the science aisle, and started looking under the D for DNA.

***Gadget***

Okay, apparently, I should've looked under the B for biology, but still, we'd finally completed most of the assignment. It had only taken us three hours, two bathroom breaks, four trips to get something to drink, and seven different movies on PHO. The last one had been the best, It had Percy's idol, Armsmaster, fighting with two guys who were dressed up in bathrobes that had glowing sticks. Percy said they were called lightsabres, and that the movie was stupid because Star Wars was a movie, not a game, but they were really more like contained plasma fields. The battle started out rather tense, Armsmaster taking care not to let his halberd get hit by the so-called "light" sabres, even though the alloys he used in his halberd were probably strong enough to withstand the heat. However, about halfway through, one of the criminals stepped on his own bathrobe and fell over, his little plasma stick hitting him in the arm. He screamed in pain while the other guy started running, somehow thinking his buddy was hurt worse than he was. It was just a little burn, you could easily see by the design that it wasn't even that hot, they were obviously over-reacting, but the end-result was still hilarious.

While Emma was putting the finishing touches on the report, Gary had found something else. A "news" site, by the name of wyomingnewsdotblogspotdotcom. Great. Absolutely amazing. As long as he didn't recogni "you can stop filming now Sely". Aaaaand there we had it. Henry was, apparently, too incompetent to actually edit the footage, and had put it all on the website, including the parts where he was telling me to stop filming and I was zooming in on Rodeo's finely shaped butt.

"Whoa, Sely, I didn't know you had a job at the news." Percy said, somehow impressed that Henry had shanghaied me into helping with his blog.

"Well, you know, it's just my mom's boyfriend asked me to film him and stuff."

"Wait, you mean you know Henry f-ing Watson personally? Is it true? Was there really a new cape involved at the mall? I heard he was like a master that could create old people as minions" Oh, great, Percy was a tinfoil as well.

"Wait, I thought the cape was Hallucca" Emma replied,

"No, you see, the thing is, these people didn't appear on the camera's at all, so they must be invisible because there was a cape there, and Hallucca can't turn people invisible, so it must be someone else."

At this, Gary looked up from his doom and gloom. "Hallucca totally can man, I heard she has drugs that can give you superstrength. Just check the police station, a guy broke out of his cell after taking something Hallucca supplied."

Interesting, that was new to me too. "So wait, Hallucca can turn people young and give them superstrength? And make them invisible?" I asked. This was information I hadn't known about. Thinking you're young again I could understand, but magically turning someone stronger with a pill? Wouldn't the army have recruited Hallucca then?

Percy spoke up again, reading from a web-page. "Says here it's not Hallucca, apparently there's a cape somewhere in the East that's been supplying people all over. Armsmaster says he almost caught the guy, but that the stashes in the rest of the country will still be a problem."

Of course, Armsmaster again. It was always like that with Percy, Armsmaster this, Armsmaster that. At the start of the year, he'd gotten in a fight with a senior about who was the strongest cape. That guy had said Alexandria, but Percy just stubbornly stated that with Armsmaster could easily win if he had prep time, creating some sort of anti-Alexandria bug-spray or something. Back then, I thought it was nonsense. But now? If I thought about the stuff I could probably make, and extrapolated to what a big time tinker like Armsmaster could make, it wasn't quite as unbelievable anymore. Did that mean Percy was also a tinker? Or was he just a crazy fanboy?

Emma spoke up again, while standing up to walk to the printer, apparently our paper was now finally done. I now knew that DNA created RNA which then created proteins in something called a ribosome. What all of that meant, I have no idea, I'm pretty sure I'm not a biology tinker. "So they can't stop Hallucca from distributing the drugs, because there'd be too much collateral damage, but they can't do nothing, because there'll be too much collateral damage?"

"Precisely, life is suffering" Gary answered, the gloomy little bugger.

Still, we were finally done with this stupid assignment. We were all ready to leave, and started walking towards the entrance of the library, when we saw something interesting. Horn was standing there, covered with twice his normal weight in horns. In one hand, he had a stack of flyers, with the other, he was trying to pin one of them on the public message board, but the mass of horns around him made that task difficult. Percy started running towards him.

"Excuse me sir can I help you sir you're awesome sir!" He blabbered, obviously excited at seeing a real cape in the flesh and or horns.

Horn looked at the guy, and said "Sure, just put this flyer on the message board, and spread some more around town."

Then, he saw the rest of us approaching, and a glint of recognition shimmered in his eyes.

"Camera Girl, other children, good to see you, stay in school or something, I have to go."

Okaaaaay, so maybe his looks weren't his only PR problem. He'd shoved a couple of folders in Percy's hands, who was elated with being able to help a cape, and slowly made his way out of the library. A difficult task, because his armor was about the size of the double door.

"Well, like, see you guys at school tomorrow" Emma said. While slowly walking after Horn, careful to keep some distance between her and the gnarly white hulk.

Gary, too, left the building, while I was more interested in the flyer I'd just taken out of Percy's hands. 

**Important news**

 **Information wanted on Hallucca and new drug**

 **Samples of new drug also appreciated**

 **Reward involved, 50 dollar for info, 100 per parahuman pill.**

 **Bring to HORN, your tenacious protector. Help keep streets safe.  
** **Horn_Cape**

A hundred bucks per pill? Either there were very few pills in the hands of Hallucca, or I'd just found a way to get rich. All I'd have to do is break into Hallucca's base, steal her stash of out-of-state tinker drugs, sell them to Horn, and collect my reward money


	7. Chapter 2,3

**Gadget 2.3**

Awesome new semi-translucent helmet with movement detection that works through at least some walls? Check. I hadn't figured out how to translate the data coming from my fancy-pantsy new sensor into something use-able, but I could detect when the signal from an area changed, and thus, when something was moving there. As long as I was standing relatively still at least.

Kick-ass neural beta-wave blocker? Check. Being forced to go meditating with Amar had been really boring, but the whole brainwavey thing was kinda cool. Apparently, people who are awake have different brain stuff than people who are sleeping. By playing with those waves, you could make people fall asleep by forcing them to have specific brainwaves. I wasn't quite sure about the specifics, but I'd used some magnets and a coil to create a little ray-gun thing that would slightly disrupt neural patterns, making waking people sleepy, and already sleepy people fall asleep. It wouldn't stop anyone during a fight, but would be useful to take down a guard or two.

Party in a box? Check. I started that project by trying to create a better sound-system for my laptop, but what I'd ended up with was a little too good. Still, something that could probably be about five times as loud as a jet engine should serve as a pretty good distraction. That, of course, led to my next gadget.

Ear Plugs? Check. I hadn't actually made these myself, but I'd changed the logo so they would say Gadget were you would usually find the brand.

Voice changer? Also check. It had two modes, deep dark and intimidating, as well an even squeakier imitation of Emma's voice.

Actual location of Hallucca's hideout? Not check. Turns out finding the main stash of the local drug kingpin isn't actually as easy as you'd think it'd be.

It's been five days of constantly tinkering and sending out drones, and mom was starting to get annoyed. I was out all day, I hadn't gone to school yesterday, preferring to fix all the equipment I needed before the weekend started, and Henry was too busy trying to cover the events of last week to provide her with attention, so she kept trying to nag me instead.

Henry's blog, in the meantime, had taken off. Working as a sort of hub for local interpretations of the events of the last week. The Mall thing starting it of last Saturday. Monday, when we had been in the library, there had apparently been a fight. No-one knew much about what happened, but it ended with Skip standing on top of a bruised and battered banker. Then, on Tuesday, the local bank office had fired the banker, as well as some other people, probably because they were on magic drugs. On Wednesday, some other big shot had gotten arrested at the local golf-course, after hitting seven hole in one's in a row before violently chasing golf carts around. Speculation was that he'd been using a special drug to improve his coordination, and lost it. Thursday had been relatively silent, but yesterday was absolutely crazy. Several of the local skaters had been zooming around town at far above their normal speeds, tearing up asphalt and crashing into cars. In the meantime, a local farm had had its water drugged for some reason, leading to a stampede of cows right through main street. No-one had gotten really hurt, courtesy of Rodeo's crowd-control, but word on Henry's blog was that they were going to call in some big-time capes to help with the problem.

Horn, meanwhile, had been doing much the same as I was doing. But instead of sending drones out to the local trailer parks and other such areas, he'd been walking through doors (as well as walls) trying to find out where Hallucca had her base of operations these days.

And the villain herself? She hadn't come out yet. Good thing too, because the damage done to Westlake had been nothing compared to what could happen when Hallucca went all out. The last time that happened, several apartment buildings had to be torn down.

Still, the entire city was kind of tense. Parahuman violence was something you saw on the news, not something that happened to you. There were even some over-reacting soccer moms saying the school should be closed down until everything was over. Sadly, that hadn't happened yet. I could really do with not having homework for a while. That's how that worked right? No school, no homework.

Still, try as I might, I just had no idea how to find Hallucca or her base of operations. At least, not unless I asked someone for help. I guess I've been putting it off, but I did have a source I could ask. Its just that it'd be a very bad idea.

Blake had been one of my mothers worst boyfriends, from here "but I can change him" phase. I usually wasn't that interested in the guys my mother dated, but Blake was someone I actively avoided. He wasn't just a violent junkie, he was a dealer too, and that meant he worked for Hallucca.

*** Gadget ***

The local trailer park was a remarkable sight. It'd never been too high quality, but Horns rampage and superpowered junkies hadn't exactly improved the situation. Half the trailers had recently been torn apart by one power or another, while the other half had been torn apart by virtue of being really old. Still, you had to admit, there was something to be said for replacing street-lights with burning tires.

Maybe it sounds self-congratulatory, but my helmet? It's awesome. On the outside, near total reflection, like a really shiny mirror. On the inside, translucent glass with build-in HUD. Or, at least, it would be, once I figured out what to program into my HUD. For now, I could increase the brightness of my display, giving me low-level night-vision, and my motion-detector would activate if I stood still enough, showing me where exactly things were moving. I'd set my voice-changer to deep dark and dangerous, and held my guns in my hand.

Well, I say guns. One of them was my looper, which looked vaguely menacing and tinker-like, and the other was my Sleeper as I decided to call it, and mostly just looked really sci-fi spacey. They wouldn't actually do anything if it turned into a fight, but I hoped they would be enough to stop a fight from starting.

I made my way to one of the trailers, and knocked on what was left of the door. Blake opened the door. He had the kind of face you would see in a medical textbook, under the header "drug abuse". He looked where my eyes should be, under the reflecting helmet, fear appearing on his face. I wasn't sure if it was from seeing a cape with two guns on his doorstep, or from seeing the reflection of his own face, both were equally scary.

"The…. The fuck you want?" he stammered, confused.

"Hello mister narcotic distributer, here's what's going to happen. I am going to ask you to tell me everything you know about your boss's operation, You are going to object, then, I am going to fire the gun on my right. It's a neural activator, it'll excite every neuron in your body at the same time, leading to unimaginable pain until you are on the cusp of death. Then, I'm going to use the gun on my left, which will heal your body back to full health. Then, we will start all over again, unless you tell me what you know." I said. I'd written the speech down and had it displayed on my HUD to make sure I wouldn't forget any part of it.

"Mister narwhat now?" He replied. His eyes confused.

"Look, just… Just tell me where the stash is or I shoot you." I said, maybe short words would help the guy, he was obviously high or something.

"You… you want my stash?" He said. Had he always been this slow?

"No, I want Hallucca's stash, and I know you know where that is."

"You no get my stash. Is my stuff." He had started drooling, green slime slowly oozing out of his mouth. When It fell, I could hear sizzling. Was he a parahuman? Or had he used some of Hallucca's special import? He seemed panicked, was this a self-defence reaction?

"Yes, I no get your stash. But only if I get Hallucca stash".

"Huh"

"You tell me where Hallucca, You keep you stash." Aaaand now I was descending into caveman speak as well.

The man looked at me, some strange mechanisms working inside his meth-addled brain. He seemed to be overthinking it. He didn't want to get hurt, but he didn't want to lose access to drugs either. I gave him a final boost towards helping me.

"I'll give you half Hallucca's stash if you tell me where it is."

"You give me the stuff, you go to the high place. On top, Hallucca house."

"Sure, k thanks, bye"

I started walking away, happy that I had some sort of hint on where to go.

"Wait, where's the stuff. You say you give me stuff!" He said, caustic spit being launched from his mouth, I saw a drop catch my helmet, close to my eyes, I could see the acid trying to work its way through the glass. I was suddenly very happy I could just spawn a new one. Still, this guy was scary.

"I told you, I'll give it to you once I've stolen it"

That hadn't been enough. Stupid of me, trying to argue with someone doing magic cocaine. He started walking forward, obviously thinking I had the stuff I promised him somewhere on me, and not about to let me leave without giving it to him.

Shit, that was bad. I grabbed my earplugs while slowly walking backwards. The guy was almost upon me, and was about to grab me with his arms, drops of spit still flying from his mouth. Still, he wasn't very fast or co-ordinated, and I was able to put in my earplugs before he caught me. I turned around and started running, dropping a different gadget on the ground.

An earsplitting noise sounded behind me, high frequency tones that hurt my ears through my earplugs. I didn't turn around to see if it was effective, I just kept running.

Once near home, I checked the damage caused by his spit. The helmet was slightly damaged, but that wasn't a big problem. Still, I thought glass was supposed to be resistant to this stuff. Did that count for my modified see-through screen too?

Then, I looked at the rest of my clothes. They were in a worse shape than I had thought. My pants had a gap all the way through, and I could see my upper leg. An acid burn had formed, but somehow I didn't feel it. Did the substance contain an anaesthetic as well? I checked further. A few smaller drops hat hit my legs, and there were three or four holes in my shirt as well.

Shit.

***Gadget***

Spit flew at the monstrous figure, spit that could eat through almost anything, but not this guy. The figure walked forwards, and held out a large, gnarly hand. It grabbed the acid spitter by the neck, and asked.

"What was that noise?"

"The shiny bitch, she stole my stash, she promised she would give me." The creature answered, now hanging above the ground. Too crazed to be properly afraid.

"The stash, where is it now?" The figure continued.

"you're a hero right? You're gonna bring me my stash? You promise to give me and I tell you."

"Yes, I promise."

"Top of the Radley building, she lives in the penthouse."

"And the sound?"

"The bitch's box did it." The junkie answered, pointing at the tiny box on the ground.

The figure looked at the box, then back at the addict. His clothes, as well as his skin, had been partly burned away by his caustic spit, drooling down on him. Whatever made his mouth immune, didn't work for the rest of his body.

"Now you give me stuff?" the man asked. Unaware of what the drugs had ultimately done to his body.

"Yes." Horn answered. He grabbed the man's torso with his other hand, and threw him.

Then, he looked down, and delicately picked up the small box. A small thing, but he recognized the design, similar to the drones he'd seen flying around. A patch-job, but an extremely effective one. A tinker then.

The junkie flew through the evening night, eventually landing in the lake the city was named for.


	8. Chapter 2,4

**Gadget 2.4**

So apparently, Hallucca was hiding out in the rich part of town. The tallest building in town, the Radley building, was a luxury apartment complex seven stories tall. They even had a security officer with a desk, making sure that none of the riff-raff entered the building.

The building was tiered, every floor being slightly smaller than the one below it, giving people an open-air balcony to hang out on. But, while the floors became smaller, the individual apartments got bigger. The bottom floor held a swimming pool, a gym, and a small convenience store. The first floor, had fancy one-person apartments, the second having several rooms. The top floor was a single apartment, although penthouse was probably a better word to use. Still, for all the money it cost, my drones couldn't detect much of a security system. Sure, the building itself was secured, with camera's, motion-detectors and other such tools, but the top floor was empty of technological security systems. Hallucca, at the top floor, wasn't at home the night I'd send out my drones, directly after getting the location, but I could see the stash in a back room somewhere. At least, there were a lot of pill and powder shaped objects that I couldn't quite identify.

I looked over myself. I'd spend all Sunday in my room, telling my mom I wasn't feeling well. She thought that that was because I was sick. It wasn't a lie, but it was more because of my acid burns. I'd looked up on the internet how to do first aid on them, but it still hurt like hell.

My eyes drifted from the 3-D model of the Radley building to my web browser. Yesterday had been filled with little incidents, people like the junkie I interrogated had started showing erratic powers. The problem with these drugs that gave people superpowers, was that they were still drugs. Someone on some sort of super-speed had thrown up all over main street, his velocity only increasing the area he desecrated. Then there was the guy for whom peeing felt like it burned, only literally, he'd set a store on fire with his pee-based pyromancy.

For some reason, school still wasn't cancelled, and while the newspapers and local websites were filled with reports on incidents, apparently the local government was acting like it wasn't a big deal. There'd been a public shouting match between Horn and the local PRT director, (who, by his last name, seemed to be related to Percy) the suit had said that asking for reinforcements wasn't necessary, Horn had disagreed, citing "chronic incompetence" on Rodeo's part. Some of the press had asked the mayor for comments, but she refused to answer, stating only that it was "a non-issue".

So that meant I had to go to school tomorrow. So if I wanted to get my hands on that stash, I'd have to get it tonight. Which meant I had to figure out a plan quickly.

I could probably climb my way up to the top floor by sneaking over balconies, but there were simply too many camera's to take them all out with my looper. Even more, the building was well-lit, and the streets were busy around there, even at night, so I would be seen by normal people if I tried that.

I could go from the inside, but I'd need to get past the guard to go in, and then sneak back past him with all my loot on the way back. I might be able to put him to sleep, but still.

Maybe if I created some sort of distraction. That might work.

***Gadget***

I looked back over my shoulder at the burning electric building. The backlit "danger high voltage" sign slowly melting. With my tinker powers, I'd been able to rewire the insides,making it overload, and hopefully lead someone to believe it was some electrical power gone wrong.

The street-lamps were turning of one by one, some burned out by the overload, the others out of power from the following power outage, and I could see people leaving the clubs, annoyed that the music had gone out. I made my way to the Bradley building, the power was off, but it hadn't had the intended effect. Instead of staying indoors, quite a few people had gone on their balconies to see what was happening.

That meant the outer route was out. I'd need to get inside the building somehow. I saw some people at the front entrance, recognizable by the light of their ciggarete butts. That meant I had to take the back door.

The backdoor wasn't guarded, or, at least, not guarded by anyone that was actually moving. I unlocked it, and made my way inside.

The inside of the building was dark, lit only by the emergency lights. I could hear some people moving down the stairs, but hoped they wouldn't see me if I stayed in the shadows. Now, how to get up. I could make my way up the stairs, but everyone who saw me would wonder what the cape with the crazy helmet was doing in the building. The elevator then? It was probably out of order, but I was pretty sure you could just climb your way up through the elevator shaft.

Luckily, the elevator door was opened. I waited for a quiet moment, and made my way in there, before noticing my mistake. I'd actually have to make my way to the top of the elevator box to get into the shaft. I was also a small girl.

Ten minutes later, I looked down the hatch, seeing the pile of power tools I'd used as a step-ladder. Now to get up. In my mind, I'd imagined just climbing up the chain the elevator was hanging from like in the movies. But I now had a better idea, there was a maintenance ladder at the side of the elevator shaft, build into the wall. I used that to make my way up.

The maintenance ladder ended in an maintenance hatch at the top of the building, on top of the penthouse I was trying to enter. I 'd easily been able to pick the lock of the hatch, and was standing on the roof, surveying the city. Most of it was still dark, but I could see lights in the distance from houses that had their own generator, and a few of the farms dotter around the big lake. Besides that, there was the noise. I hadn't heard it inside, but something big was happening a bit to the north. I could hear things smashing into each other, and I was pretty sure that I could see a destroyed building. Still, I didn't come here for the view. I jumped down onto the Penthouse's rooftop garden, and lockpicked my way through the glass door. The house was absolutely gorgeous. There was a golden chandelier, an absolutely massive TV, even a replica suit of armor, with Sword and everything. The weirdest part was that it wasn't what you'd expect from a drug dealer. The art on the walls, the antique furniture, most of it was old money. I made my way to the vault, grabbing a few choice trinkets on the way, some jewelry, silver cutlery, a stack of Earth Aleph DVD's, you know, that sort of thing. Some went into my bag, other stuff went into my power.

Like the sword, a rapier, I think it was called, that would be nice in a fight.

The "vault" room, was a small room with a big table. On that table were two things. A pile of drugs, and a pile of money. I put the money in the bag I already had out, and shoved the the drugs into a new bag. Job done, time to get my payment from Horn. There had to be at least a thousand of those powerpills in there, if not more.

While making my way out, my eyes fell upon a wall of framed newspaper clippings. Most of them dealing with Hallucca. Logical, I'd probably collect newspaper clippings about myself as well if I was a crotchety 50-year old drug-dealing supervillain. However, mixed in the pile were other articles as well, articles about local elections and such. I wondered about that, until I looked at what seemed to be the centrepiece.

 **Paige Bourbon wins Westlake Mayoral election**  
New mayor promises tough policy on crime, after a campaign season marked by violent altercations between candidates, and a criminal element suspect to work for local supervillain.  
Part of her plan involves increased, close cooperation between the mayor's office, the police department, and the local PRT office.


	9. Interlude: Paige

**Interlude: Paige**

"I'm sure Rodeo has it all under control." Paige said to the room, a tiny office in the back of a government building that they used to discuss the affairs of the city in a more clandestine manner.

The police chief sighed, and the local head of PRT frowned, saying "If we had the situation under control, we would've caught Hallucca a week ago. She's causing chaos all over town! We ask for some experienced capes, we have her caught and in chains within a week."

Paige sighed, "This again? We already went through this, we have no idea how she will react if we bring in new capes. It's simply too dangerous for the city." She said. It was a lie, she did, in fact, know what Hallucca would do if competent capes came to town. She'd suddenly disappear and wait for this all to blow over. Everyone who knew anything about Hallucca's organization would quickly die from the effects of the Golden Lotus drugs, and the only thing that would remain was a crime-free city and its well-respected mayor.

The police chief, a well-build man with a tired look on his face, weighed in. "We have no guarantee that Hallucca won't go crazy anyway, If the situation goes on like this, there'll be far more damage eventually. We should at least start actively searching for her, instead of doing damage control."

"And what if we do find her? Rodeo can lock her in place and throw a rope around her, but without Horn, we don't have anyone capable of actually taking her down. Sending in the police force, no offense Chief O'Brian, is just asking for casualties."

"Then why don't you just ask for Horn to return to the team? I'm sure that catching a dangerous criminal is more important to the PRT than mere PR concerns, right?" The chief replied.

That set off the PRT suit, talking about how parahuman-human relations were already fragile, and how an abrasive personality like Horn would damage public relations nationwide.

Abrasive personality, that was a nice way to bring it. That revolting little peasant had been a thorn in the side for way too long. The man had no grace, no charisma, no subtlety, yet he had the gall to call himself parahuman, the new nobility. People with powers were simply a step above the plebs, Paige Bourbon, related to the Bourbon family that once ruled France, was nobility twice-over. She still remembered the exact moment she saw this new world for what it truly was, during her first election. She'd schmoozed and small-talked, given gifts to all the right people, based her platform upon exactly what the polls said the populace wanted, and she'd lost. Some filthy fucking peasant going by the name of Albert Smith became the mayor, preaching the use of illicit substances, marijuana. All those filthy little peasant mongrels who didn't know there place suddenly started voting. It didn't matter how much she led in the polls, the influx of peasant votes was simply too much.

At first, she'd felt defeated, cheated out of her rightful place as leader of the city, eventually the state, then the nation. Paige reached her lowest point, and decided to indulge. When the dealer asked what she wanted, she simply replied: "a little bit of everything".

That night had been filled with carnage, the cocktail of drugs causing massive hallucinations, and her newly triggered powers causing those hallucinations to be made real. Streets warped, buildings shifted until one became two, half overlapping. Living colours attacked people in the streets, and their corpses became mutated demons. When she woke up afterwards, the city was under a karmic regret. They had voted for drugs, and then reaped exactly what they'd sown.

Leveraging their fear, and the incompetence of the pothead in charge, she'd gotten the mayor impeached, and replaced him in the next election. That had been seven years ago, and the peasants were very happy that this new mayor could keep the evil supervillain at bay. Hallucca had only shown her powers in any large capacity twice more. Once when the previous police chief had decided to go after the network of dealers she had set up. The situation had escalated, and extra troops from the surrounding towns had come in. That night had ended with chief O'Brian in charge of the force, a man that knew how to follow Paige's leadership. The second time was when Horn had first appeared. The man, a vigilante back then as well, had been hunting down her dealers one by one, something which demanded an answer. That situation had ended up with Horn being strong-armed into the protectorate, on threat of charges for excessive violence and destruction of public property.

Then, some fucking PRT idiot from New York had decided that Horn needed to be kid-friendly after he'd shown up to an endbringer fight covered in a literal metric tonne of growth. He reportedly hadn't been able to do much more than stand still, but he had tanked several of Leviathan's hits before nearly drowning.

This lead to Horn leaving the Protectorate again, and left her unable to control his actions.

A cape from Brockton Bay had reached out to her, a tinker, offering drugs that granted and augmented powers. They were free of charge, if she helped him with his experiments. Some "youngenging" drugs in the food supply of the local nursing home, that kind of thing. A good trade, all she'd had to do was test on some peasants, and she'd have superpowered minions, able to withstand Horn's assault.

The problem was the side effects of the drug, her minions were slowly dying, and some of them sold the para-pills to well-paying clients as well.

The PRT fool was done talking about PR, and Paige's attention returned to the meeting.

"I'm sure this will all blow over once Hallucca runs out of pills, the capes in Brockton Bay will have the creator caught within the week." She said, not sure whether she wanted that to be true or not.

The discussion died down. They'd had this conversation about five times in the last week, leaving them unable to decide what to do, which led to no-one doing anything, and the situation slowly getting worse.

"Wait, did you hear that?" The police chief spoke up. The room was silent, but she could hear a car alarm going off outside. This was followed by the sound of breaking glass, and heavy footsteps slowly getting closer.

The PRT suit stood up and walked to the door, "damnit" he grumbled to himself.

He opened the door, and we could see the antechamber of the building we had been using for our talks, the floor was covered in shards of glass,. and talked to the shape that was now visible through the doorway. "Horn, this is a private meeting, what are you doing here?"

Horn looked at the man, a look of disapproval on what we could see of his face through the tangled growths covering it. He walked forward, entering the room through the door, and parts of the wall.

That was when the police chief stood up, and grabbed his service pistol. "I suggest you leave right now sir, neither of us wants this situation to escalate."

To that, Horn reacted, he looked at the gun, and his horns started growing further, fully covering all exposed flesh, and making him completely bulletproof. Once he was done, he replied: "True, neither of us wants the situation in Westlake to escalate. I'm simply here to take down the person who does want that."

Horn tried to look at her. When he couldn't move his head enough because of the additional growths, he shifted his feet to look at her. Paige could just barely see his eyes. He walked forward, readying his fist. Shit, she thought. Her mind raced, how could she talk her way out of this without showing the world that she was also a super-villain. She could really use some sort of deus ex machina here, but it wasn't going to come.

"Is there a problem? Mister Horn?" she said, hoping she could buy some time that way.

"You have menaced the people of this city long enough Mayor Bourbon, it's time for me to take you down." He replied, his voice coarse and rough. Had he been smoking or something? Had he been. Could he be?

"Really, Smith, you still can't get over the fact that I replaced you, so you're going to attack me with your superpowers?" How dare that man. First, he took away her chance at winning an election, and now he was going to attack her? These filthy peasants needed to learn their place. Still, she needed to be reasonable, it wouldn't do to show the police chief and the head of the PRT that she had powers as well.

"Wait, what?" Horn replied, trying to confuse and misdirect her like the vile scum he was.

"I know who you are you filthy peasant, you just hate democracy and that's why you want to do drugs!"

"I… but…. You're the supervillain…"

"Me, a supervillain? How dare you Albert Smith, you're just a pothead that can't stand being impeached, you're the worst mayor this wonderful city has ever had!"

The PRT officer looked at her, and started talking. "Miss Bourbon, his name isn't Smith."

How could that be, she thought to herself, the only explanation was that he had given a false name to the PRT when signing up for the protectorate. That would explain everything.

"Give it Hallucca, your mindtricks won't work on me." Horn replied, continuing his walk towards her.

"Wait, Hallucca? What the hell are you talking about Horn?" the PRT officer interjected.

Then, she finally had a lucky break. The moment Horn turned around to reply, the lights in the building, the entire city in fact, turned off.


	10. Interlude: Horn

**Interlude: Horn**

 **Late 2009, Paramaribo**

Water flowed through the streets, several feet high. Walter looked around. Most of the capes, some local, some protectorate, were up to their waist in water. He was not, he'd grown thick sturdy platforms under his feat. His real feet started two meters above the ground, and he was growing by the minute. The structures surrounding his feet were separate, allowing for a clumsy, but high velocity, walk forward.

The beast was close. He could see its position by both the armband that had been provided, and the beams and rays send towards it from the sky.

"It's coming, you ready?" A heavily accented voice said. He looked at his shoulder, it, too, covered in the horns. Standing on it was one of the local capes, he was wearing a costume better described as being made out of bones, than as being made out of cloth. A supervillain, or did that make him a hero? He remembered Jack saying something about capes in South America, but couldn't quite remember what it was.

"As I'll ever be", he replied. Quickly adding to the growth of horns around his face, which was the thinnest area right now.

Leviathan appeared from behind a building. Covered in ichor, his afterimage filled the street behind him with more water. The beast had a decision to make. It could go right, where a tinker had set up some sort of trap, or left, where he would meet it head-on. Horn checked his body one more time. Full coverage, more than a metres worth of brambly outgrowths in most places, more at the base of his feet. He slowly managed to move his arms forward, ready to meet Leviathan.

The beast cheated. It went neither left nor right on the T-split. It ran forward, up the buiding in front of it. Horn could see an intense blue orb thrown from the shoulder of his form towards Leviathan. The beast roared when the slow-moving projectile hit, and whipped out its tail towards him.

A swift movement of the lump of horns that surrounded his arms blocked the water, keeping the cape safe.

At the same time, Alexandria appeared from the top of the building, smashing the beat downwards into the street. It took that as a cue to choose a different direction, and started on a mad dash towards Horn.

The cape on his shoulder readied a new orb, holding it in front of them , rather than shoving it forward. Sadly, it had had less than a second to grow brighter, when Leviathan smashed into the two of them. Horn tried to move his arms, bending them around the sides of the beast, and tried to grow a cage around it.

The cape on his shoulder fell down when Leviathan started struggling. Horn could only dimly hear his armband. _Blauwster down. BD-8._

The Horns sprouting from his arms had grown around Leviathan, the beast locked in place by an everexpanding growth. But it's physical strength wasn't the problem. The problem was the afterimage. Water kept pouring out of Leviathan's body, and while the thrashing didn't damage more than two or three layers of Horns growths, the water flowed right through the gaps. Sure, it didn't flow very fast, but he was still at risk of drowning.

Still, he held on. He couldn't give up to this beast. He'd promised himself he wouldn't give up again, no matter what the challenge. His power helped with that, he thought. After all, he could always get bigger.

The horns kept growing, he'd given up on mobility, and simply swarmed the beast with ever more horns. The growths covered leviathan's torso, digging in where they could. The horns around his feet dug down like tree roots, locking him firmly in place.

Then, the world went crazy. Taking advantage of the beast's situation, a group of blasters were letting loose at its head. That was still quite a few feet above Horn's real body, but he could feel the hits as they impacted the beast. That, combined with the masses of water splashing against him and the reduced visibility caused by the horns made for a disorienting experience. Still, the beast was getting pounded, that was good.

It swung its tail, the afterimage going for the group of capes. He could see some sort of shield go up, and the armband wasn't calling out any deaths, so it probably wasn't effective, but it did create a break in the artillery fire. Horn focussed his growths, this time going for the beasts tail, trying to immobilize it. He gasped for air, hoping that he could hold the beast still long enough for them to do some real damage.

It changed tactics, kicking with its feet at horns. It broke the connections between him and the floor, but he didn't fall over, his growths surrounding the beast itself now. Its tail, and upper arms, immobilized.

Still, mobility was the name of the game here, and leviathan was mobile. It simply lifted horn, and started running. Horn couldn't look around, but he could guess what was going to happen. They kept accelerating, and crashed into a building. The shock, the lack or air, the dust, Horn wasn't sure if he could keep going, but he had to.

Another building, this time, Leviathan jumped before smashing into it Horn-first. He could hear his horns break, his incredible strength useless without being able to move around. Still, he held on, growing more horn around leviathan's limbs. Even if Horn died, the beast would still be encumbered, trapped by the same mobility problems Horn was having right now.

The rest of the fight was a blur, he could remember at least one other crash into some sort of building, but he couldn't breathe well, and thought he had a concussion. Still, the repeated crashes destroying the growths on his back turned out to be a good thing. He felt a hand on his shoulder, he wasn't sure who, but he took that as a sign to disentangle himself. He focused on the location where the horns penetrated from his skin; the forehead, hands, elbows, knees, his feet and the base of his spine. As the flying cape carried him away, he saw leviathan below him, covered in horns, unable to use his arms and tail fully.

 **A few hours ago**

The penthouse on top of the Radley building, Matthew was sitting in the library, this time not using his power. He had been using the google to look up the building, If Hallucca really lived there, he couldn't go in unprepared.

The news-sites hadn't said much about the place, only that the Radley building and its luxury apartments was bound to bring more money into the city, increasing the availability of jobs. He wasn't quite sure how that worked. Building it brought jobs, sure, but more people living in the city? How would that decrease the local problem. More people meant more people vying for the same jobs. The logging and ranching, fishing the lake. Still, if the newspaper said it, it was probably right.

Still, he couldn't find out who lived there on this interweb thing. It was time for some good old-fashioned leg-work. He couldn't very well sit here while the city was burning. He had taken leviathan head-on, this cowardly criminal would not escape him much longer.

Still, he wished Jack was here. He was much better at this whole investigation thing. Sadly, the man had been too loyal to his boss. Of course, he also had little Skip to look after. If Jack left the protectorate, then she would probably be placed in a wards team in a big city somewhere. Away from her home, her friends. She'd already lost her parents, and he could understand wanting to protect her.

If only Jack had understood that she could be best protected by getting rid of the criminals in the city, instead of walking around pretending to do something. Working with Jack had been nice, him using his power to bring people into Horn's reach, but they had been rather ineffective. Every time they had a possible location for one of the local drug dealers, they were slowed down by rules and regulations. The hideouts long empty once they finally arrived.

Then the frog-face had arrived, and he'd been the final straw.

 _No you can't just punch them like that, it looks bad in the media._

 _No you can't talk like that in public, what will people say._

 _No you can't just waltz in there, you're not a vigilante, you're a hero, you need a permit_

 _No you can't use your power like that, it makes children scared of you!_

That last one was horse-crap. Skip loved sitting on his shoulder when he was that big, and he had enough fans in the city. Also, it made him like that old comic book hero batman, criminals would be too afraid to commit crimes.

He had reached the Radley building early in the evening, and looked at the door bells, the idea being that you ringed up the person you were visiting, and they would use a button to let the security guard know to let you through. His eyes searched the names, until he found the one that fit the apartment at the very top.

P. Bourbon. Where did he know that name from. He remembered it, but couldn't quite place what from.

But, he had new information now. Time to head back to the library. He used to have one of those intelligent phones, but that had been PRT property, and it probably broke when he had thrown it against officer Blake's face.

*** Horn ***

Back at the library, he found what he had been looking for. was the mayor.

That didn't make sense. Had the junkie lied? Was the directory wrong? The mayor had worked together with them in fighting Hallucca's people. Sure, most of the time the tips she'd been able to give them were acted on too late, but every now and then they had caught one of her dealers.

Still, something was fishy. He couldn't really understand, but maybe if he went from the idea that the mayor was also Hallucca, he could figure out if things made sense that way.

So the question was, what would Jack do if he was thinking about what he would do if he was Hallucca but also the mayor.

Things would be so much easier if he could just punch someone.

Why would a criminal have some of her people arrested? She'd won the election based on an anti-drug policy, so it helped her there.

Maybe to keep them in line? Make unruly subordinates disappear into prison? There'd always been strong enough evidence for a good conviction and a long stint in prison.

And, since the mayor worked together with officer Blake, that would explain why the protectorate wasn't allowed to go after Hallucca directly. Maybe she wasn't really that dangerous. Maybe he could just waltz into the room and take her down, saving the city once and for all.

That seemed like a good idea, simple, yet effective. A quick punch to Hallucca's face to clean up the city.

 **Present**

Horn turned around to reply to Blake, A difficult proposition. He's put dense layers around his body, and it was rather hard to turn in place due to the restricted mobility. Still, he managed to do it. "Think about it, it all makes sense" he replied to the man, when the lights suddenly went out.

Not just the lights in the building, he couldn't see the streetlamps outside either. Had Hallucca fucked with the power grid? Done incredible damage to infrastructure to give her a small edge?

Probably, that seemed like her style, he'd cornered her, and she'd escalated by creating a black-out.

When he heard someone moving behind him, he turned around as fast as he could.

Too fast, one leg's armor got caught in that of the other, and he tripped, falling on top of the mahogany table, breaking it with a cacophonous noise.

"And there goes our poker game" a sarcastic voice called out. The police chief, O'Brian.

He could hear a door slam shut at the other side of the room, Hallucca was escaping.

A hand touched his shoulder, "look Horn,if you have evidence that the Paige is secretly a supervillain we can talk about it, but you can't just attack her out of nowhere."

Blake… Horn knew he meant well, he just didn't understand. But then, that was what he'd thought about the mayor. And she'd turned out to be a supervillain. Did that mean that Blake was also a villain?

But there weren't any other villains around, except maybe that new tinker with the disappearing noise machines. But she was female, probably.

Horn decided that he didn't have time for his ex-boss/maybe supervillain, and started going after Hallucca. The chase was on, and he couldn't let her escape. The only question was why she ran instead of fighting. Was she going to get reinforcements? Some sort of weapon.

He stood up, and walked towards the door Hallucca had used, going straight through the wall instead. He could hear the two men behind him yelling, but didn't pay attention to them.

He found himself at the end of an alleyway, and saw a dark figure that had almost reached a corner, she was running barefeet, and Horn could feel a single high-heeled shoe crush under his feet.

He grabbed a dumpster, and took aim. He couldn't let Hallucca escape into the crowd.

*** Hallucca ***

Running through the alley, Hallucca was desperately trying to form a plan. First of all, she needed a way to defend herself. She'd kicked off one shoe, and grabbed hold of the other. Hidden in a compartment in the heel, was a small dose of LSD, one of her more effective tools. Still, it wouldn't be enough for an all-out fight with someone like Horn.

She heard a wall crumble, and, shortly after, something heavy get picked up. She quickly put a strip under her tongue, and started feeling the enhanced effects. When she turned around, the dumpster was already mid-air. But it wasn't a normal dumpster anymore. Its edges started fraying, its colours shifted, and it started flying in a straight line, no longer bound by gravity.

Hallucca turned the corner as the dumpster-like object flew over her head, crashing into a building opposite of her.

Home, she'd get home, and use her stash herself. Then, she'd take down Smith once and for all, superpowers or not.

She looked at the street signs, trying to think of the best route to take, but it was difficult to see through the darkness. That, and the signs slowly started melting and dripping. She had no time, she'd have to finish the stash in her heel and hope that was enough to get to her main supply.

*** Horn ***

The dumpster missed, crashing into a storefront on the other end of the street. Bad aim, or something else?

Still, he suspected he knew where Hallucca would be going, and he had the advantage in physical strength. Where Hallucca had to keep to the streets, he could take shortcuts, like the kool-aid man.

He started running after her, and saw her again. This time, he threw a car, which duplicated into two different car-like objects mid-air, and crashed down on either side of Hallucca, the explosions lighting up the surrounding area, he could see her sillouette in the flickering light. Tonight, he would end this, once and for all.

*** Hallucca ***

Almost there. She was almost home after this hellish chase. She'd outsmarted that filthy . She was almost happy, elated, when Horn crashed through a wall, onto the street, right in front of her. The building started crumbling behind him, crashing down under the stress.

She took one of her last strips, and this time, she focussed on Albert Smith. His beige-white horns started discolouring, melting into each other, becoming a single object. That would keep him occupied for a minute or two, long enough for her to run upstairs.

She ran past the confused looking group of smokers at the front of the building, the security guard amongst them. Hid tardiness actually being a useful trait for once. She ran through the lobby, and saw that the elevator was open, but out of order due to the blackout. In addition, strangely out of place, she could see a pile of power tools and other assorted objects lying there. Still, no time to think about it, she ran up the pitch-black stairs, navigating them by memory and a small emergency light every now and then.

Two stairs up, she heard someone come down the stairs as well. She took a wide turn to dodge the other person, but appearantly she had the same idea, because she half-crashed into the girl. She only knew it was a girl, because of the squeaky little apology the dark shape gave her. "Sorry, no time, gotta go". The shape got back on its feet, and started running down again, carrying some sort of heavy load in a bag over her shoulder.

No time to think about it, she had to hurry, before Horn broke through his now mutated armor.

When she reached the top floor, she saw that something was wrong. The door was left open, and she was sure she closed it. She always closed it, she didn't forget that like some filthy little peasant, that was how you got robbed! Especially with people as incompetent as the building's security guard around.

Making her way inside, the shock really hit her. Someone had ransacked her place. Still, she had no time to survey the damage. She had to grab her stash and finish off Horn. She made her way to the hidden room.

NO

NO

NO

FUCK NO

WHO THE…

THIS COULDN'T

WHO COULD

THE GIRL

SHE'D BEEN CARRYING STUFF

IT MUST HAVE BEEN

SHE'D KILL HER, CRUSH HER, DECIMATE HER, VAPORIZE HER ANNIHILATE ERASEDROWNEXTINGUISHSTABELECTRIFYBURNERADICATEMELTKILLKILLKILL.

She looked at the remains of her emergency supply. 5 strips left. She walked to the kitchen, a bottle of pain-killers, as strong as possible without prescription. It would have to do. 

*** Gadget ***

My shoulder hurt, I should've looked out better on the stairs, that woman had crashed straight into the still painful burns of yesterday. Still, I had made my way out of the back door again. Where to now, my hidey-hole? Or straight to Horn? I summoned and checked my phone. No signal, of course, my work must've crashed the cell towers as well.

So I'd have to wait until that got fixed. Well, I had the time.

That's when I heard the scream coming from the top of the building. The sound was horrible, like someone who just saw their life's work destroyed, or found out that her boyfriend liked the twilight movies and she'd have to watch them now.

Then the world went crazy.

Well, not exactly crazy, more… Dali-esque? That was Dali right? With the melting clocks? Because that was what seemed to be happening to the building she'd just left a few minutes ago.

Shitsnacks, Hallucca had come home to roost.


	11. Chapter 2,5

**Gadget 2.5**

Okay Sely, calm down, buildings start melting down spontaneously all the time. There definitely isn't some crazy supervillain/election fraud (was it fraud? I don't know, also, not the time to think about this.) person going to chase you down and kill you for stealing her stuff.

She probably just wants to give me cookies. Yes, that sounds about right. Hallucca just wanted to thank me for helping her get rid of her drug problem by baking me cookies.

Cyanide cookies.

Okay, so lets go through my options.

Option 1, stay here freaking out, get found by Hallucca, die a horrible and painful death.

Option 2, take some of the magic drugs I just stole, get more applicable superpowers, beat up Hallucca, wait for what are probably horrible side-effects, and die a horrible and painful death.

Option 3, go find protection. No, filthy internal dialogue, not that kind of protection.

Option 3a, go to protectorate for protection. Go to jail, do not pass start, do not collect 2000 dollars, die a horrible and painful death because I'm too pretty for prison.

Option 3b, go to Horn for protection, give him pills, Horn hugs me, die a horrible and painful death because of that.

Option 4, stop weighing your options and run, that garden gnome wasn't alive and walking towards you a second ago was it? Also, was it a real garden gnome that was animated by Hallucca's power? Or was it telekinesis making the gnome move like some sort of minion, or was the garden gnome part of a secret society of drug dealing lawn ornaments? I mean, you can't really trust flamingo's, everyone knows that, right?

So yeah, time to run, just start running, you'll figure out where to run later.

I started moving, away from this damned building. It was time to just get the hell out of here. Straight over the middle of the road would be a good idea.

That said, my lockpicker, would it work on cars? If I could steal a car, I could drive away as fast as I could and leave this whole situation to be somebody else's problem.

I ran forward, and saw a car parked on the side of the road. Time to try lockpicking it. I summoned a lockpicker, and went to work. The door opened within a second, that part worked at least. Now to get the car to start working. There was supposed to be some sort of keyhole on the steering wheel right? Ah, yes, there it was. I plonked my loot-bags in the passenger seat, and tried using a lockpick on the second keyhole.

It worked. NICE. Now it was time to actually get the car to start. The turning of the key had started some lights and stuff, and I could hear the hum of the engine. Now which of these pedals made it go forward?

The one on the left didn't do anything, so it probably wasn't that one. The one on the right then? I pushed it down and the car started driving forward slowly, when my tinker-sense kicked in. The engine noise, combined with the acoustic dampening properties of the car and the current speed meant that something was holding the car back, stopping it from going full speed. I looked out the back window, fearing I would see Hallucca using some sort of super-strength to hold on to the car from behind. I could see weird lights dancing about the still melting Radley building, and stuff that really shouldn't be moving had started doing just that, but none of it was in my newly stolen car.

Something else then, I thought to myself, still slowly going forward in the car, the engine struggling against something. A telekinetic? A car-o-kinetic? Maybe someone was warping the space around me to make cars go slower inside the area?

I was starting to panic even more. Okay Sely, you can do this, you saw mom, and even dad, drive around. If mom could do it, it couldn't be that hard. Let's go over this logically. First of all, this car was more like mom's car. Colin had a stick thing with a lot of numbers and shit on it, while mom's just had forward and backwards. That meant something, but I had no idea what. Was dad's car just faster? Because it had more speed numbers? No, that didn't make sense, mom's car could also go on the high-way, and dad had put the car into higher numbers while driving through the city.

Maybe the clock-things behind the steering wheel. The tank was currently almost empty, at a low 10. Or was that the speed. Then the amount of gas was that other one, which didn't have any numbers, just a full/empty bar. And then there was one with super high numbers and a multiplier or something? Was that for when you turned on the turbo? Cars had turbo right?

Okay, so maybe the little lamps? There was one that just said "check engine", which, as I knew from TV, meant that the check engine light was broken. There was also one with some sort of red circle with an exclamation mark, but I had no idea what that meant. And something with a guy sitting down with some sort of balloon on his lap.

Maybe something else? I frantically looked around, hoping the slow-moving car wouldn't crash while I was trying to at the same time keep the wheel right, keep the go-pedal fully depressed, and look for the thing that was making it slow. This, in addition to the light show behind me, and the cries of fear coming from the few people that were still outside.

I tried pressing buttons. The radio turned on, the lights on the side of the car started blinking, and the swiper thingies were making the front window clean. That wasn't working, and this radio station was stupid. Now I had to go and turn that off again too.

Maybe that suggestively shaped rod in between the chairs? Mom did something with that whenever they had to go somewhere, was it some sort of good luck charm? I really didn't want to tug on that thing, way to Freudian. Still, it was about the only thing I hadn't tried. I pushed the button thingy on top, and moved the compensation stick.

That was when the car started moving faster, and faster, and faster.

Time to work on the steering wheel. The road was relatively straight, but there were other cars around, so I should probably try to dodge those. But, there was another problem. I found the pedal that had made the car go forward, but how did I make it go slower? Could I, like, half-press the pedal? Would it then turn on half the time? My gas was at 40 Miles per hour, and only going up.

While removing my foot from the gas, I also figured out where I was going. I was going east. How did I know that? By the quickly approaching pier, and the lake it was standing in.

The pier was probably the most touristiest area in the city, it consisted of a wooden walkway covered in small restauarants, fishing spots, and a boat-rental place. As well as some sort of tour thingy. Fuck that tour.

The fact that, of all buildings, I crashed into the little tourist tour thing office was, of course, completely by accident. Also, I figured out what the balloon thing was, Airbags.

I stumbled out of the car, loot bags in hand and nursing my bruises.I made my way into the half-destroyed little tour shack. In the distance, I could see the Radley building, still slowly melting. In front of it, was fire. And all throughout the city, I could hear sirens going off. So how was I going to make my way out of here? The whole city was in chaos. The pier I was on extended quite a ways into the water, and I could see people on the beach with buckets. Were the fires that bad that the fire department couldn't handle it?

Still, how was I going to get out of this? The pier was empty this late at night, so I had the time wo go over my options, but if Hallucca was chasing me, I needed to be fast.

Maybe I could repeat my trick, steal a boat, and cruise away over the lake. But I'd had a hard time with the car. I had no idea how to drive a boat. Did you even drive boats? Or did you, like, boat them?

I could get of the pier walking, but that would bring me closer to Hallucca, something I desperately wanted to avoid. She was a crazy maniac out to kill, no sir me no want.

I was brought out of my thought by the sound of something else smashing into the remnants of the tour office. I looked around, and saw a wounded Horn. He'd landed face-first, but that wasn't the problem. His face was covered in a mass of horns. The rest of his body, however, only had a few tangled lines of horn on it, not enough to protect him. I could see him bleeding from small cuts, and he'd probably have quite a few bruises tomorrow.

"Hey big guy, you allright?" I said, the voice modulator making my voice squeakier than normal. To be honest, I sounded like a chipmunk, but it was better than the deep bearded man-voice.

He stood up, and looked at me. Or at least in my general direction, it was hard to say with the tangled growths around his head. His voice started, raspy, even deeper than me with my modulator. Did the horns influence his speech? "Tinker-girl… I don't suppose you have any heavy weapons?"

Weapons… heavy weapons… "I have a power saw, but…. That's basically it. You want one?" I replied, summoning my last remaining saw. The other charges I had spent, building a pile of garbage to get up to the top of the elevator.

He walked forward, and took the weapon from my hand, walking towards the beginning of the pier. "Stay behind me" he said, and I looked past him to see why.

Approaching from the street was the weirdest army I'd ever seen. Most of them seemed to be mannequins, but weirdly deformed, arms coming out at weird angles, colours constantly shifting. And there were teeth, lots of teeth at weird locations. Behind them, a woman I presumed to be Hallucca. She was wearing a pant-suit, and no shoes. A deranged expression on her face, lit only by a bleak multi-coloured light that seemed to be coming from nowhere. Closely around her, straight lines were distorted, taking constantly shifting shapes.

Horn dashed forward, power-saw spinning, he slashed at a mannequin, decapitating of what I presumed was once its head. At first, I thought he'd killed it, because it started turning to goop. But then the goop started moving around Horn, slathering itself around his torso. I could hear a hissing sound coming from the skin, which probably wasn't good.

While Horn was struggling, Hallucca moved forward. She looked at me, and screamed. "THIEF… THIEF… GIVE IT BACK SO I CAN SLAUGHTER YOU!".

I wasn't sure what to think. Did she really think that was a compelling argument? She was unhinged, deranged. She actually had a smile on her face, a smile that just screamed serial killer over and over.

I had to figure out some sort of plan. I needed to help Horn, but I also needed to back away from Hallucca. Think Sely, think. Drone? No. looper, lockpick? Neither would work. Loud noises? Would only make her angrier. Motion detection? What use would that be here? I knew where she was.

I kept slowly backing away, Hallucca moving forward at a steady rate. While she moved past Horn, I could see the planks below him mutate, becoming green, growing flowers, until suddenly they swept downward, bringing Horn into the water with a splash.

"Don't think Smith can save you now little peasant." She said, a maniacal laugh screeching out of her throat, and those of her minions. The sound was terrifying, yet oddly beautiful, otherworldly.

Wait, Smith? Mr Smith, the biology teacher, was Horn? I couldn't believe it. Horn was, if not stupid, at least not very learned. And Mr Smith always gave piles of complicated homework. Was there something else there? Did Horn just pretend to be stupid? Did the horns make him stupid, a mental drain on his powers? "Wait, Mr Smith is Horn?" I asked Hallucca, hoping to buy some time.

"The filthy little peasant thinks he's smart, but I'm smarter you know." Reply came from one throat and several plastic mouth-holes.

Maybe I could get her monologueing. Villains did that right? I mean, I didn't, but all the villains on tv did. "So, before you kill me, could you tell me your amazing plan? I mean, you're both the mayor and the biggest supervillain around, it must be an brilliant plan." Of course, I'd left out the fact that, until recently, she was also the only supervillain around, and I wasn't very interested in commanding an army of drug-dealers. Why make money when you can just steal it?

"Are you mocking me? Mocking ME? ME! I can hear sarcasm you know, you filthy little peasant!"

Darnit, I should make a sincerity modulator that automatically made things sound sincere. That could help.

I looked around, trying to find some way out, but I was almost at the end of the pier now.

The end of the pier, that was it. That just might work.

I held the bag of drugs behind me, above the water. "Stop right there you crazy person, or I'll drop your shit."

That seemed to work, since Hallucca stopped in place. Her eyes looked at me, crazy, feral, like a wild animal. She had a predatory glance, but she stopped approaching. The floorboards around her were still deforming, turning into other materials and shapes, some glowing, others sucking the light out of the area, but she wasn't actively approaching me. I could only hope she ran out of juice before she gathered the courage to call me on my bluff.

I wasn't quite sure if it was a bluff, but I needed the threat, and if I threw the bag into the water, dissolving all the pills inside, I was sure she would horribly murder me.

The stalemate was broken by the sound of breaking wood. Behind Hallucca, about halfway on the pier, Horn was standing, having climbed his way back up, and escaped from the grasp of the weird goopy mannequin thing. He was walking forwards slowly, steadily. The horns on his body growing larger, providing more strength and protection. Hallucca send one of her minions towards him. A red one this time. When Horn readied a punch, it exploded. It didn't, however, have the intended effect. Horn was now heavy enough, or strong enough, or whatever enough, that he simply stood in place. Where those horns under his feet? Intertwined with the wood of the walkway? He stepped around the small gap the exploding minion had made, and made his way towards Hallucca.

*** Hallucca ***

Smith, the little peasant bitch knew Smith. They were in league together. They were going to take everything that was rightfully hers. They needed to die, they deserved to die. It was her birthright to have them die.

But she had the drugs. She couldn't kill the mirror-headed girl because she had all her stuff. She needed that stuff, it was hers, it belonged to her. It was hers by right. She deserved it. The little mongrel couldn't take it.

And Smith was back. Couldn't the man just stay down? The beast should know when he'd lost, and he'd lost years ago when she took her rightfull place as mayor.

This couldn't be, it shouldn't be. The world owed her, she was Paige Bourbon, saviour and villain at the same time. The people of Westlake lived and died at her whim. How dare these mongrels take that away from her. Not like this. Not again. She needed to control this situation, but she simply couldn't.

A void, something she'd seen before. Something big, a form too big to conceive, going on more than three different directions. Impossible, yet natural. she swam through the void side by side with her partner, each part of a whole, Spiralling, breaking apart, she saw something, no, saw wasn't the right, she knew something. A destination, a trajectory. She discussed. Send out a message, a word, but so much more. No sound, pure meaning. Subtle and blatant at the same time. They swam forward through the void together, bending in and out of realities, the laws of nature shifting at their whim, yet still somehow binding them.

Then she was again. She was on her knees, and was that Horn had fallen over too. She turned back around. She couldn't see the girl, she'd probably fallen down, taking the drugs with her. Was drowning good enough for her?

She wondered how she would kill her, when she noticed the clarity in her mind. She looked at her feet, the warping space around her feet shifting with her gaze, but no longer quite as chaotic. She smiled, and looked at one of her newly created minions, its face, she made more human-like, the torso refined into that of a body-builder, the shimmering pattern of discolouration taking a more ordered form.

Horn jumped at her, but it was no use, the fool jumped too high, and flew right over her head. She started laughing at the situation, the silly little peasants, they stood no chance now. They'd taken her stash, but she didn't need it anymore, reality was hers to command. Their entire plan was irrelevant. She looked at the city. Gone was the time for council meetings, votes, and placating state government. She would rule this city, as was her birthright.

Today was a good day for house Bourbon. Queen Paige would rule this city.

*** Assault ***

Ethan was sitting on the couch in the base, watching some sort of weird llama based sitcom, in which the father llama sold shoes, and his llama wife was cheating on him with an Alpaca.

Aleph entertainment was weird, how was this even a real show? Still, he couldn't complain, everyone loved llamas.

That was when Armsmaster, no, Colin, walked in. He seemed upset, and not just his general "we must beat up criminals all the time but I have to do paperwork" upset. He was more sad then angry. He had a printed article from an online news-site in his hands, the paper slightly damp. He walked toward the couch, and Ethan shifted position, making room for his boss. He sat down, and started talking.

"Assault, I'm going to do something horrible, and I need to know, do you have my back?"

Strange, that he'd ask him that. They weren't exactly good friends, and he'd always taken great joy in making bad jokes at Halbeard's expense. But he seemed serious now.

And anything that could bring the stoic Armsmaster to this state demanded a response.

"Anything you want boss." Ethan replied.

"Good, grab your gear, the plane leaves in ten minutes." Colin said, walking away, probably to gear up.

He'd dropped the piece of paper while walking away, and Ethan looked at it. It was a printer out newspaper article, and included a picture of a teenage girl.

 **Supervillain attempts to take over the town of Westlake, Wyoming.**

 _A local supervillain by the name of Hallucca has attempted to take over the city of Westlake, a rustic town in the middle of Wyoming, after a moving battle involving a local vigilante and ex-protectorate member by the name of Horn. Reports are sparse, due to a massive power outage during the fight, but rumours are that the supervillain is actually also the towns mayor. Sixteen people were reportedly hospitalized, with many more receiving minor injuries. Most shocking is the suspected kidnapping of 14 year old Sely Pierce, who has been missing since the fight._

He couldn't quite place why the article had made his boss so upset, until he looked closer at the picture. The girl had short-ish blonde hair, with some of the locks dyed in different colours. She had an overly large scarf wrapped around her, but the striking part was her face. Her hair might have been a different colour, but now that he looked closer, it was like looking at a female version of Colin. The same eyes, nose and ears, and a goofy smile on her face that reminded him of Armsmaster watching a bunch of criminals run away, straight into an ambush.


	12. Chapter 3,1

**Gadget 3.1**  
The first thing I felt when I woke up was that I was wet, the kind of wet you got when you were six years old and you had a little accident, but moreso. In fact, my entire body was covered in wet clothes. That wasn't the worst thing. I was also pretty suspicious that this wasn't actually my room. The first thing that caught my eyes was the fact that I didn't actually have any trees in my room. The second was that I had an actual bed, instead of a pile of leaves probably filled with snakes or something.

I heard the crackling of fire behind me. The smell of burning wood in my nostrils. When I stood up, I found out that I was still wearing my clothes, which were totally wet.

Wait a second, these were the clothes I used for… Where was my helmet?

I turned around and saw the fire, as well as the guy that created it. The man was sitting by the fire, warming himself. He looked big, both in size, as in just general impression. Like a lumberjack or something, but bigger. There was a short beard, not well-trimmed, but not the type crazy woods-people had either. More what you'd get if you forgot to shave for a week or so, I think. I didn't have too much experience with growing beards, me being a teenage girl and all.

More noticeable were the scars and scratches, as well as what looked like a weird pattern of light burns on his skin, like a weird structure covered most of him, but some radiation or something went through.

He was resting his head in his palms, looking down at the fire. When I stood up, trying to get a better view of the situation, he noticed me.

"Ah, I see you're awake, little thiefling."

Shit, he knew who I was, knew what I was. But who was he? Some sort of crazy woodsman or something? It'd help If I could actually remember how I got here.

I'd stolen the car, and crashed into a building on the pier. There, something happened. Horn had been there hadn't he? And some crazy woman? Hallucca.

Shit, that was it, Hallucca was the mayor of Westlake. I had to….

No, something told me that that little bird had flown. She'd been running around in a pantsuit yesterday, not a costume, people probably already knew.

Okay Sely, try to remember, what happened then... Horn had fallen down, but he'd come back… I'd had the pills over the edge of the… Then something had happened. I just, couldn't quite remember what, but it was something big wasn't it?

And in the water, I'd never been very good with swimming, the helmet and the stuff I was carrying hadn't been helping, had this man saved me then? It suddenly dawned on me.

"Horn…" I said, identifying who the man was.

His hand disappeared into a pocket in his jacket. I could see it now, the extra holes in his clothes, where the horns usually grew out. He wasn't a shabby woodsman, he was a crazy vigilante…

Was he getting a gun? Was he going to execute me in the middle of the forest?

"You must be hungry, here." When his hand came out of his pocket, it contained a granola bar or something. He threw it to me. It was just the bar, no wrapper. It was probably completely gross. Still, I was pretty hungry.

I took a bite. It was dry, soft and moist at the same time. Yuck, how long had that been in his pocket? How had he kept it dry while swimming in the lake. Where the fuck were we?

Good question, that last one. "Where are we? Mister Horn?"

He looked at me, as if he hadn't understood the question. " We're in the forest, can't you see that? Did something happen to your eyesight, little thiefling?" He seemed slightly worried, but accusatory at the same time. I got the feeling he didn't like me. Maybe it was the part where he kept calling me a thief. It was true, but still.

Not happy with the non-answer he'd given me, I summoned my phone. No service. Still, GPS worked with planes or something, that should work right?

No, wait, sattelites. That made way more sense than planes. But then why would sattelites want to know where they were? Couldn't you just look at them to find them? Or was that the problem? Still, sattelites moved pretty fast. Create an interferometric device to scan the night sky to locate fast-moving satellites too small to see with the eyes, connect that with an online database, and bam, you'd have a locator. My power was amazing.

Although, to do that, I would need an online database with satellite positions, as well as view of the sattelites. I could just use normal GPS. But still, that didn't make my idea any less awesome, just less, well, practical.

Then, Horn noticed that I'd been staring into nowhere with my phone out, and decided to do something about it.

"Give that here." He said, standing up.

"Okay" I replied, throwing the phone at him. He caught it, and looked at what I'd been doing on it or something. In the meantime, I checked the back of my mind. Yep, still two remaining. I summoned another copy of my phone, and went straight for the map app.

Somewhere to the North of town. Quite a bit to the North. How had he gotten us here? Super-Motorcycle? Parachutes? Teleportation? Maybe a teleporting motorbike with parachuts? That could help with both height differences as well as quick deceleration not dependent upon the road surface. In fact, I could probably create a device that automatically deployed several different kinds of parachutes for deceleration for when I went flying somehow. Link the trigger to an accelerometer, calculate necessary extra drag for safe landing, suck on my thumb because Horn just ripped my second phone from my hand rather roughly.

And he didn't stop there. After he'd thrown my second phone into the fire as well, he grabbed me by the shoulder with one hand, and started patting me down with the other, looking through my pockets.

I didn't say anything about it, probably a smart idea given the angry look on his face.

When he was done, he looked over what he'd found in my pockets. Typical things that every teenager had really. Several packets of gum, a fancy lighter, a fountain pen, some Protectorate cards (I'd acquired a holographic Chubster last Wednesday) , a slightly souped up Laster-pointer (Math was boooring), some cash, an extra hallway pass, and a whole lot of things I'd grabbed from Hallucca's place, most if which I'd thought I'd put in a gab instead, but apparently hadn't.

Before I could ask for my stuff back, he grabbed me by the neck again, and forced me to sit down on a log besides the fire. It was warm, and would help with my wet clothes, but I hated the forceful movement. The only thing I hated more than Horn pushing me around, literally, was the idea of him punching me. He already thought I was a criminal, he would probably do it.

Horn sat down too, close enough for his clothes to brush against mine. I wasn't sure if he was a pervert, paranoid I was going to try something, or just really socially awkward, but I didn't like it either way. He smelled like sweat and smoke. Not cigarette smoke, but the kind that comes from campfires like the one we were sitting in front of.

"I need your help" He said. It sounded forced, as if he didn't want it, but still needed it. "You're a tinker right? You design advanced stuff."

Well, there was more to it than that, but sort of? "Yeah, I guess?"

"I'm too slow"

Well, that was an understatement. Or was he not talking about that kind of slow? Did he want me to make something that made him faster? Some sort of crazy power armor or something? I was pretty sure I couldn't do that in the middle of the forest…

"So, I need you to figure out how I should grow my horns."

"You need me to make your horn grow? Seriously?"

He grimaced at that. I guess he wasn't the type for humour. Even if he made it so easy…

"You know what I mean… don't you? You tinker-types are really smart, so figure it out."

He seemed annoyed when he called me smart, jealous. I guess he was the type of person who wasn't very smart, but was smart enough to know he wasn't, and that that annoyed him.

He pointed to his forehead, and several areas near the joints of his limbs, and I could see new horns appear.a demonstration? Except he just kept on going, until he was partly covered.

He moved to a bag, and grabbed a rifle, some zip-ties, and a sketch-block with some pencils. Then, he walked back to me. He put the rifle and sketch-block aside, and motioned for me to give him my arm, holding the zip-ties.

"Sorry but ehm… I'm not really into that stuff you know? Me being fourteen and all?"

He looked at me, and grimaced again. Come on… was he completely unaware of how creepy tying up a girl in the middle of the forest was? Wasn't he supposed to be some sort of hero, instead of a super-creep? Although… He did get kicked out, maybe they'd covered up the real reason for him getting fired.

When it became reasonably clear to him that I wasn't going to give him my arm, he grabbed me by the shoulder again, and tried to get his hands on my arms himself. I tried to struggle, but he was already much bigger than I was, and the added strength he gained from growing horns wasn't really helping my cause.

He'd tied my wrists, together, as well as my legs, before he began speaking again.

"I'm going to hunt us something to eat. You are going to sit here and make me a better design, or you are going to regret it. Do you understand thiefling?"

I wondered about it. Did I understand? What would he do if I said no? Would he repeat himself, but even slower than he already talked, or would he get angry, and 'make me regret it'.

Still, right now, I couldn't help him even if I wanted to, after all, my arms were still tied. "Ehhm, you know I can't draw or anything while you have my hands tied up right?"

He looked at me, then at my tied together hands, and eventually at the note-block he'd grabbed. After a few long seconds, he grabbed the zip-tie around my arms, and ripped them with his bare hands, which were basically bear hands. Then, he pushed the note-block and some pencils into my still hurting hands. "Behave yourself!" was the only thing he said, before he walked off into the forest.

Once he was well and truly gone, I looked over the sketch-pad., thinking about what to do. I could just summon a knife or something and cut myself loose, but from what I'd seen, I was still a pretty big distance from the city, and Horn could catch me in the meantime, he looked to be an experienced woodsman. I could also make the design, but what would he do if he no longer needed me afterwards? Just get rid of me? He'd been crazy enough to kidnap me, even though he also saved me from Hallucca. I just really wasn't sure how to interpret the guys' actions.

In my sleeve, I had something that could help me with that. I grabbed Horn's wallet, and started looking through it.

There was some cash money, a large-ish amount of notes, with some change. There was also a drivers license, as well as an Alcoholics Anonymous coin, at least, that was what it said. I wasn't sure why a gathering of alcoholists would need those coins. Maybe to pay for beer or something?

There was a membership card for a bowling competition, some papers regarding the NRA, and what looked like hand-made calling cards, similar to the posters I'd seen in style. There were also a few business-cards that belonged to other people. I saw Horn, some PRT guy, and some from out of town heroes. One of them even from some sort of South-American cape.

There were also some notes, probably personal stuff he wanted to remember. There was one page about me, which contained several lines of information.

 _Hacked camera's, Nocturnal drones, Screaming device, Weird helmet? Neural activator? Healing gun?_

 _Tinker? Stealth-based? But why the sound? Works for Hallucca? Works against? Gang-war in Westlake?_

From there, the note started making less and less sense. Something about me being a ghost, or a Japanese movie, something about something called a "case 53". Lots of weird stuff.

Still, after going through all that stuff, and thinking it over, I'd been able to think of something that was sort of like a plan. I would turn Horn's power against him when he returned.


	13. Chapter 3,2

**Gadget 3.2**

My hands flew over the paper sheets, I made complicated blown up technical schematics, copious notes on how to grow and in what order, how different tangles would weave into each other, reinforcement without obstruction. Drawings showing how limb movements would translate to wholly different movements in the completed whole. The whole design was five-limbed, and walked on four. It looked more like an old sci-fi moster than anything I'd ever seen in a zoo. Shoulder shrugs would drive the forward legs, while ankle and toes would be responsible for the back legs Knee's and hips were used for two different balance axises. The elbows and hands were responsible for the fifth limb, coming out of the front of the thing. That one was made for smashing. It was big, like, house-sized big.

That was just one design. I had others.

One of them was basically slenderman, but bigger, and without the tentacles moving around, and covered in horns.

Okay, so it was nothing like slenderman, but still, it looked really creepy, so it was still kind of like slenderman.

Fuck slenderman, I hadn't slept for a week when someone send me the game, saying it was an "Alep-classic". Still, I could totally beat him. I'd just build a helmet with cameras everywhere so I'd always be able to see him. Also, night-vision. Also also, a working flashlight.

The third design was reminiscent of one of those creepy little goat dudes. The ones that were kind of like centaurs but also not because they only had one pair of legs but also horns? The top of the design was normal, just some armouring. But the bottom was like three times as tall,interlocking horns creating some sort of three-jointed mutant leg-thing. I'd be fast, really fast. But he'd probably fall over the moment he stopped running.

There were a couple more, but the most important one came last.

At first, I'd thought about simply tricking him into locking himself into a cage of his own horns. But that had its problems. Namely, that I didn't quite know what exactly happened when he dropped his horns. If they de-attached, I could make sure it'd still cage him in. But what if they disappeared? Or lost most of their structure and hardness? Changed into dust or something? No, this one was far more insidious. It was very similar to the first one I made, with a small difference. Rather than being some weird sort of sleek on the outside (at least, as sleek as crazy horn bodies could get), it was spiky. Dangerous looking thorns covered it. My guess was that, amongst all the designs I made, a guy like Horn would pick this one. The others looked scary, creepy, unnatural, weird. This one? It looked really fucking dangerous.

The real danger, however, wasn't to the people it attacked. The real danger was to the person inside it. To Horn. Everything in it seemed to work perfectly on first sight. The first few steps would even go right. But the moment he attained some speed? Some of the spikes would extend too far, and crash into the core of the body. And, Hopefully, if my calculations, or what went through for calculations in the middle of the forest in a situation where I had no idea with exactly what kind of materials I'd be working, or with what kind of precision Horn would be able to grow them, he would stab himself.

And if that didn't do the job, I'd get in even deeper trouble, somehow, someway. I wasn't sure what it would be, I mean, it couldn't get much worse than kidnapped by a crazy vigilante/creepy lumberjack dude who wanted something from me. But at least he wanted me for my mind, not my body.

*** Gadget ***

When Horn left, it had been, I think, somewhere in the morning. Maybe noon at most. I couldn't tell by the sun, it was too cloudy for that, but still, it felt like that time. Also, I could probably lock a device onto the tidal force generated by the moon to function as an independent time-keeper that didn't need no man, or watch, but that was besides the point. It was just as stupid as my satellite-tracking device, because I could also just use a watch.

Sometimes, my power makes me come up with the most useless shit ever.

Now, when he left to go hunting, I expected Horn to come back in a few hours. Not in the evening. It was getting dark. Sure, it was still early in the year, but still. This sucked.

What sucked more, was pretending to be his prisoner. I could just summon some wire cutters and cut through the flimsy little zip-tie that Horn had bound me with, but then he'd see that I escaped, and he'd track me. I was pretty sure that he was better in the woods than I was.

I mean, sure, I was a scout. I'd been with the girl scouts for two whole months, but that was when I was, like, eight or something. I wasn't quite sure, I tried not to remember that part of my life. Too much pink, and far too many pony pictures.

At least he'd left enough firewood to allow me to keep the fire going. Although firewood was too good a word. It was mostly just a tree, brought down with a single strike of his hand, and torn into pieces much the same way. Brutes were bullshit like that.

After way too much time, Horn returned. With a bear.

A dead bear, but still a bear. By the looks of it, he'd punched the beast to death.

"I see you've been busy." He said, gesturing to the pile of paper next to me. Sure, some of them were blueprints for him.

Most of it wasn't though. Most of it was doodles, loony tunes style.

There was one picture of Horn, getting hit by a falling anvil.

There was another picture of Horn, walking into a painted wall

Then there was a picture of Horn running over a cliff and only falling when realizing it. I'd put a lot of effort in that one. It was hard to make his face look surprised, because mostly it was just angry, and covered in Horns.

Then there was a picture of Horn chasing a mouse that was totally not me, and crashing into a wall.

And there was a picture of Horn looking at a poster that said "Horn season".

Then there was a picture of my dad, sort of. He looked cooler in my picture than in real-life. In my picture, he had a gun, and he shot first. Needless to say, the person he was shooting was Horn.

There was also a picture I reeeeaaalllly didn't want him to see. It was a picture of Horn, and Hallucca, and they were making out. I was pretty sure that one wouldn't go over well.

Then there was a picture of Horn's car (you could tell by the fact that it said HORN'S CAR in big bold letters. It had a really really big compensation stick.

Okay, so maybe I really didn't like the guy. And maybe I shouldn't have written my "Ode to Horn is an asshole". Maybe that was bad form. But still, the guy punched a bear? Who would punch a bear?

Okay, I totally would punch a bear if I could.

While I was contemplating how to give him the designs without showing him the pages that were most definitely not designs, Horn sat down and started skinning the bear, slicing off meat.

I wasn't sure if you could actually eat bear. But food poisoning was probably better than starvation, and Horn looked like the guy who had eaten punched bears before.

He didn't say much, which I was very happy with. I hated talking to the guy. It seemed like, no matter what, he would make a really sketchy statement, I would call him on it, and then he would be angry because a young lady shouldn't know those words.

Still, I was hungry, and the bear meat was looking quite good.

"Why are you staring at my meat?" Horn said.

Seriously…

"I'm hungry." I replied, trying not to think about what he just said too much.

At that, he cut of a part, put it on a sharp stick, and handed the stick to me.

Was I supposed to? This was meat, not a smore…

Still, it did start smelling pretty good after a while. Maybe it was because it was actually pretty good. But, it was probably just because I'd hit my head too hard, or the hunger was driving me crazy.

After we were done with dinner, Horn started going through my designs. He'd looked them through, studying the pages intently. Or, well, he was studying the pictures.

For a moment, I thought he was going to pick the slender-Horn design. I'd put it in there mostly as a joke, but apparently he'd recognized it, and liked the idea. If my plan was to work, I would have to dissuade him from that one.

"You know, that one will make you too stiff." I said.

Horn looked at me, and his hand went out, grabbing my ear, and giving it a twist.

"Augh"…Fuck that hurt. Damn… I wasn't sure if it was bleeding, but… it definitely hurt like it did.

Horn just looked at me after hearing my scream. He looked unsure of himself, like he wanted to maybe apologize. In the end, however, he chose not to. Probably too proud to apologize to a 'thiefling' like me.

"Enough of that young lady". Was all he said. Oh, so I was a lady now? Not a thiefling? Was that a step up, or a step down? I wasn't quite sure, after all, our esteemed batshit insane mayor/drug lord had been quite the lady as well. Probably was even an actual lady, like, as in European nobility or something.

So was I a lady? Mom once told me she was one/thirty-eight Cherokee princess. I wasn't quite sure how that worked, but still. Depending on how much of a Cherokee princess my dad was, I was still at least one seventy-sixth Cherokee princess, so sort of a lady, maybe?

It was probably safest if I stopped talking until directly asked. Still, Horn had moved on from that design to the next, so mission accomplished.

*** Gadget ***

It'd worked. Horn had picked the spiked design. He'd gone over it, asked a few pointed (No Sely, don't say it, he probably hates puns too) questions, and went over the details with me. It was big. It'd take hours to completely grow. Still, he said he could do it, and told me to go to sleep.

Thus, I pretended to go to sleep. Sure, I may have dozed off once or twice, but it's still pretending if you wake up within an hour or so!

Horn had started growing bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Eventually he'd reached the size where he started growing the spikes. That was the moment I summoned a pair of scissors, and started working on freeing my legs. My supply of phones had refilled, I had two now, ready to come at a moment's notice. One I still had, one had reformed in the back of my head somewhere.

While Horn was busy fiddling around with his new exo-suit thing, I'd let the fire go lower and lower. When he was done creating it and started walking around, I snuck away.

Once I could no longer directly see him nor the fire in the night sky, I took out my phone, looked at the GPS signal, and started running.


	14. Chapter 3,3

**Gadget 3.3**  
While I was running, I could only think of one thing.

Namely that this entire situation sucked.

I was cold, I couldn't see shit because of the darkness, my entire body was bruised, battered, and acid burned, and apparently, power in the city was still out.

Okay, so, in retrospect, maybe that feedback loop I created in the power grid did a lot of damage. But really, any competent repairman should be able to figure out what had happened by now, and most streetlights shouldn't have burned out from that. It'd been a day, why had nobody fixed anything?

Worse, you'd expect some people to have private generators that could still provide energy. Had something happened to them?

I was standing on top of a hill that looked out on the city. The kind of place where happy families went to picnic. Where they could look over the city together. But where the city had been, I could see only a few small lights. It was late, middle of the night late, but some of the light sources were moving through the streets. People walking around with a flashlight? I could see a few buildings that were still lit, but not many. There was the local bank, and what I think was the water treatment plant, where water from the lake got filtered and treated before going into the pipes.

Those things I could make out by the moonlight were even weirder. The Radley building seemed to be completely gone, melted to the ground somehow. Had that been Hallucca? I'd been inside of that yesterday.

Then there were some blocks where there seemed to be crumbled buildings. It was hard to make out. I should've made some night vision goggles.

And a weapon, a good weapon would've been really nice the last few days. I hadn't made one because, well, if someone saw me, I was probably fucked either way. The entire idea was to be stealthy enough not to need weapons. If someone like Horn saw me, there wasn't much I could do except run away, and it wasn't like I stood a chance against your average cop either. Drawing a weapon, wouldn't that just get people to start shooting me? I sure as hell didn't have any armor, except for my helmet.

Still, would've been nice to have had the option as a back-up. I'd need to fix something for that.

But, that wasn't the problem I had right now. I needed to get home. My clothes were torn, I was cold, hungry, sore. I was pretty sure those burns from the crazy druggy were starting to get infected. I'd fallen in the mud a couple of times while running here, and that couldn't be good for half-open wounds.

I pondered, should I be wearing my helmet? It'd attract attention, but people would probably leave me the hell alone of they thought I was a cape. If someone saw me, in and out of helmet, would they figure out who I was? My clothes right now, ragged and muddy as they were, could belong to either a costume, or a normal set of clothes. If I was seen in them as Gadget as well as when I was just plain old Sely, could people connect the dots? Horn already knew of course. That was going to be a problem. Had he unmasked me while I was unconscious? I was pretty sure I'd been wearing the helmet when I fell into the water, but it could've just disappeared after a couple of hours.

That was the same reason I didn't just summon a new pair of clothes. Like everyone, I'd had that dream where you're walking around town without pants on, something which was, in my situation, a very realistic fear if I'd summoned clothes.

I should probably just walk home without the helmet. Hopefully, Mom wouldn't have noticed that I was gone. She was probably with Henry. A power outage meant no internet, which meant he couldn't work on his blog, and had time for her again. Wouldn't be the first time I was gone for a few days. There was the time I went to Brockton Bay most recently, and a few other outings.

I made my way into the city, and the first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. There was no-one on the streets, I couldn't hear any cars, the only thing I saw moving was a couple of flashlights in the distance. I kept away from those, this wasn't the night to go investigating, this was a night to take a long warm shower. At least, if the water was still working.

The streets were torn up in some places, melted in others, even scorched here and there. It looked like the damage that had been done last week, only far more of it. It didn't make sense, I'd taken Hallucca's special stash for myself.

Unless. What had happened to it after I fell into the water?

If it had gotten in the water supply…

I saw a flashlight, dangerously close. Shit, I'd gotten caught up in thinking about the drugs. Where could I hide… I looked around. I was pretty close to the mall, where it had all begun. The front of the mall was wide open, instead of the usual large glass door. Could I hide inside? Or would they patrol in there? It was worth a try.

I made my way to the front, and saw the ground covered in glass splinters. I looked at my shoes. Soft things, ones I'd selected for sneaking around, would they survive the glass? Or would a different place be a better idea? Were there other hiding places?

A dumpster. Really, was that all I could see? Still, it'd beat walking over glass in small worn shoes that'd probably not taken my night-long hike through the forest well.

I could already see the flash-light people at the corner of the street, I really didn't have the time to be picky about hiding spots.

I ran forward, and climbed into the dumpster. Luckily for me, it was largely empty… largely.

I snuck a peak out to see who was walking by. It was a… rather weird group of people. Some of them looked like junks, or gang members. Raggy clothes, crazed looks on their faces, baseball bats, some rifles and automatic weaponry. Most of that group had powers, probably. One of them had flaming eyes, another had incredibly long arms and legs, that sort of thing. A dozen or so of them. There were also a few other people, well-dressed, professional. One of them had a gun, but they didn't look like the combat sort. They looked like businessmen, bankers, lawyers, that sort of person.

There was only one thing that linked the two groups, I knew. Hallucca. She'd been, at the same time, both drug kingpin, as well as mayor. These were the people that knew her, that she worked with in either identity, drawn together by her superpowered hand.

They passed me by. They weren't talking amongst each other, so there was nothing I could conveniently overhear. They just… patrolled.

Why, why would they patrol the city like this? What the fuck had happened, that no-one was outside except for armed maniacs with powers? It didn't make sense.

I managed to climb out of the dumpster, sort of. My arm got stuck on a rusty edge, and I was pretty sure it got half sliced open. Fuck that hurt. Worst thing was, due to how dark it was, I couldn't even see how bad it was. And I wasn't about to grab a flashlight and get caught by those crazy banker/hooligans. I could just hope it wasn't that bad, as I made my way home.

*** Gadget ***

After all the events of last night, I'd finally gotten home.

Or, at least, where my home used to be.

Right now, it was a, well, a puddle I guess. Completely melted down.

Shit.

Shitshitshitshit.

This was Hallucca… This was… was this personal? Did Hallucca know who she was? Had she gone after my home in revenge for me robbing her? How had she even known? Did she have clairvoyancy powers or something? Had Horn told her who I was?

No time, I had to get out of here. But where? My secret workshop hidey-hole? Too obvious, if they knew who I was, then they would've found that too. Somehow. I don't know how but somehow.

Shit, where else could I go. The police? They'd arrest me for being a supervillain, and they probably knew my secret identity by now too.

The hospital? They'd be able to help with my wounds, but... They'd probably tell the cops I was there.

In the same vein, where would mom have gone, if she escaped. Henry's place, maybe? He'd asked me there to help edit the interview footage, and he worked from home.

I guess it was as good a place to go as any.

On my way there, I saw more destroyed buildings. Some had walls just broken apart from the inside out, others were slightly melted, though none as heavily as my home, or the Radley building. There were still a few patrols around, but they were easily circumvented. It was rather simple to keep track of the only lights in the city if you watched for them, instead of dreaming away and not paying attention.

Henry's home, however, was not okay. The entire apartment complex had been burned on the outside in several places, and the door of the lobby had been blown away. I walked through the dark corridors, hoping I could still remember which door led to Henry's place.

Of course, that was if there was still a door. The place I remembered as being Henry's home was sort of missing the door. Not in its entirety, but it was like someone had carved a door in the, well, door, so you could just walk through. I looked inside, and the place was completely ransacked. Someone had gone through it, searching for something. The walls had been ripped open with some sort of power, all the pillows on the couch had been torn apart.

The only positive thing in this was that there was no blood, so, whatever had happened here, mom and Henry hadn't gotten hurt in this place.

That was a very small positive.

I made my way to the bathroom, and pulled out my phone for light. I looked like hell. My face was covered in mud and scratches, my hair was a mess, and my clothes were worse. Luckily, Henry was one of those health freaks that thought bottled water was a better idea than normal water. Complete nonsense most of the time, but right now? Actually a good idea.

Having gotten a couple of bottles from the kitchen, drinking a few too, I started washing myself. Still, there wasn't enough water for my clothes. Maybe I could take some of my mom's clothes? She wasn't that much taller or bigger than I was. You know, discounting the chest department.

I went through what remained of the closet, and found out that my idea hadn't been that good. Sure, my mom kept some clothes here, but they were a specific sort of clothes, not the type I wore. Still, I'd been able to grab one of Henry's hoodies, and a pair of pants I held up with a belt, they reached up to my waist, but clean clothes was more important than a fashion emergency.

I'd also checked out my arm. It was a pretty big gash, but not very deep. It covered my fore-arm, and some blood dripped from it, but it didn't look too serious. Although I would need to get some sort of antibiotic into me. Once dressed, I looked through the medicine cabinet. There were some painkillers, very strong painkillers. Probably my mom's, she had back problems or something, for which she had the painkillers. Still, there weren't any antibiotics or anything.

That got me thinking, could I make some with the stuff I had here? There were a few supplies below the kitchen I could use as a disinfectant when properly mixed, I could probably make some sort of bandage from the curtains, but this shit really wasn't my specialty. I summoned some paper, and started making notes. The stuff I could work with probably wasn't pure, so I'd have to create some sort of filter first, probably heat based, vaporize what I needed and leaving the rest, I could use alcohol for that. Then, I needed to superheat a needle and threat, that was what they always did on tv when stitching a wound. But, instead, I could create a small device to just burn the tissue closed, cauterize so the blood couldn't get out, write an algorithm that detected wounds automatically so I didn't need to trust my hands, it could perform first aid on myself.

I looked over the house, knowing that this wasn't the time to go tinkering. Applying some sort of bandage with linen from the bed would be easy, so I did that. Finally, something went right. The sheets were slowly turning red, but it was better than nothing. I looked at the bed, all torn up, and I didn't want to know what had happened on there. Then there was the couch, most of the pillows were gone, but the bottom of the couch remained relatively intact. That looked really inviting right now, I needed to sleep.

"Hey, you're his little assistant aren't you?" Someone said. I opened my eyes, but they were still heavy with sleep. Strong light shone through the curtains, and I could see the source of the sound in the corner of my eye. It was the security guard from the mall, the guy with the shitty security cameras. He was wearing some sort of weird sigil now, it looked, French? Maybe? I'd seen a couple of those symbols in Hallucca's home. He also didn't look quite all right, like he was a little sick.

"Sorry girl, but, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you with me, my kid needs those antidotes, you understand right?"

While saying that, he was walking towards me. How had he found me? did he live in the building? Was he watching over the place? Had I made too much noise or light? What the hell was going on? Why was he working for Hallucca? Why was he walking towards me with a nightstick like that? What antidote? An antidote for the drugs? Was there even such a thing?

I tried to stand up, but stumbled over my own sore legs. Luckily, when he reached me, he didn't knock me unconscious. No, he just grabbed me by the arms and applied a set of handcuffs to me behind my back. That, and a blindfold.

The second day since everything went crazy, and things had only gotten worse.


	15. Interlude: Henry

**Interlude: Henry**

Henry looked at his antique typewriter through his thick square glasses. To the left of the typewriter stood his Frappuchino Di Latte Bolognesa Ohne Zahne, with right next to it a packet of pumpkin spice he'd saved from last Halloween. On the right was his laptop, opened to his website. Over this last week, his website had exploded in popularity. Articles such as "10 reasons why tinker-made drugs are the hip new thing, you won't believe number Four!" and "Why the population of Westlake needs to check its non-parahuman privilege." had made his site the most popular news website around. Part of that was that other local news outlets had been rather skittish with articles on the current situation.

Last Wednesday, he'd been approached about that. Someone from the mayor's office had come by, and told him that his current journalistic direction was "counterproductive" and that he was doing damage to the cities' tourism income.

He hadn't thought much of it back then, just the establishment trying to cover its ass. But it'd been three days, and there had been even more tries to get him to stop publishing. Sure, doing the news was quite different from his usual fare, but that just meant he'd become more of a journalist, and less of a blogger. And although he'd often said that stuffy old journalist should get with the times, he was secretly quite happy with his newfound status. Some government pressure probably just came with the job.

Right now, he was writing about something that happened last night. Appearantly local vigilante Horn had accosted a poor working-class man just trying to provide for his family, and flung him into the lake. This, of course, showed clearly how the errors of capitalism lead to government violence against the less fortunate. Somehow.

He only needed to figure out how an independent vigilante that had problems with the law was somehow an agent of the government. Maybe he could get some inspiration from Aleph theories. Chemtrails? Too obvious, and there weren't enough airports around. Russian spies trying to undermine the Protectorate? Could be, but he needed something better.

Maybe something about how the only female parahumans in the city were either a drug lord or a little kid, and that meant the parahuman patriarchy was keeping them down? Or he could go back to the good old classics and say that all Protectorate heroes were vigilantes before becoming official was cool.

The problem, of course, was that being a hipster was cool nowadays, and Henry didn't really want anything to do with anything popular. Except now he was popular.

Maybe he could grab his camera and get some soundbites? Cover up the flaws in his argumentation by letting people on the street reach the conclusion for him? He'd have to ask Sely to help him again, and she'd apparently been sick in her bed all day. But he couldn't do it on his own, because Sely still had his, rather expensive, camera somewhere.

Maybe Annabelle could help him? He could make it a date. Was that romantic? Interviewing people?

He started typing, getting the article ready for insertion of a video.

The problem with having a website instead of being a more legitimate journalistic outlet, was that he'd have to take the pages he'd typed on his typewriter, and then re-type them on his laptop. Still, a small price to pay for being hip and trendy enough to use antiquated and useless equipment. And it went DING!, which was always nice.

*** Henry ***

After typing up his piece, he'd gotten some takeaway artisan vegetarian meat-lovers pizza. And a machiatto di tutti de mare of course, but that went without saying. He'd eaten it in his green bio-gas car, while making his way to Annabelle's place.

Once there, he found Annabelle in a state of distress. She couldn't find Sely, even though she had been sick in her room all day. When she went up to Sely's room to ask if she was coming down for dinner, she'd found her bed empty.

"She's probably just hanging out with friends or something" He said. Sely did that every now and then, just go out for a bit. She'd come back in a few hours. The girl could take care of herself, very much unlike Annabelle. He loved her dearly, but the woman was a mess. Her previous boyfriend had been abusive, and had driven Sely to run away. She'd come back, perfectly all-right of course. The real problem was what it'd done to Annabelle. She barely kept it together. She forgot where she put stuff, she'd break her electronics and then forget that she'd done it, she blamed the neighbour, and she wouldn't even let her daughter use the internet anymore. In Henry's eyes, anyone who would discipline a child by taking away her internet access was a little disturbed in the head, it was just too cruel.

Still, when it was just the two of them, she was incredibly sweet. When Annabelle went for something, she did so with all her passion, and what she was going for, was her relationship with him.

Annabelle looked at him, "I guess it will be all right, I hope. But I'm a good mother, how can I not know where my child is?"

The good mother thing again. It wasn't that Annabelle was abusive or anything, it was just… it was like she didn't have the time for her daughter. It wasn't her job, she only worked part-time, it was just that there was always something more important that came up. Dates with him, going shopping, hanging out with friends, eating out The only time she'd pay attention to her daughter was when she could find nothing else to do. But, he'd never heard Sely complain, so that was probably all right with her.

"So, do you want to go out? Help me interview some people in the city?" He asked. "Maybe we can find Sely in the city centre?"

That helped, her face looked less sad now. She seemed enthusiastic at the prospect at spending the evening together, just the two of them, and the total strangers they interviewed.

He made his way to Sely's room, trying to find his camera. Ah, there it was, on her desk. A few of the access panels had been screwed open, the little rascal probably wanted to find out how it worked on the inside, but it still worked perfectly fine, better even.

Then, he went back down to get Annabelle, who had by now almost forgotten her woes at her missing daughter. This would take her mind of her troubles, and help his blog as well.

*** Henry ***

It had gotten quite late, but they'd gotten some great footage. People in the city theorized that Horn was secretly working for Mexican immigration cartels, that he was actually Alexandria gone undercover in the seedy underbelly of the city, and that he was simply a misunderstood man who wanted to improve his community. All of them were theories that made his article about how he was working for the man to keep the little folk down much more believable in comparison.

The problem, however, was that the power in the city had just gone off.

"Do you know what's happening? Henry? I'm scared, it's dark." Annabelle said, hugging herself tightly to him.

"It's allright sweety, just a power outage."

He looked around, no-one was panicking. Sure, it was dark, but cellphones could be used as a makeshift flashlight, and the power would probably be back in a couple of hours. "Shall we get back home? Sely will probably be scared to be alone in the house in the dark."

"Okay" Annabelle replied.

*** Henry ***

Sely hadn't been home, and the power hadn't come back on. Furthermore, there had been some sort of crazy parahuman fight in town, at about the moment he and Annabelle had decided to go back home.

Luckily, Henry still had his typewriter. Right now, not only was the most popular journalist in town, he was also the only one still capable of writing.

The problem being, of course, that they didn't have internet to upload anything he'd written.

Right now, he and Annabelle were in the hospital. Annabelle was there because she worked as an administrative worker, he was there because the place had its own generator, and thus, light.

Ann was working with the rest of the hospital staff on coordinating the treatment of all the recently wounded people. The town had gone even more crazy. Several buildings had been destroyed in a fight between Horn and Hallucca, including the Radley building in the middle of town, which had melted into a puddle. Hallucca had, according to the rumor mill, been unmasked, although people weren't quite agreeing on who she was. She had also, quite clearly, won. The lobby of the small city hospital was filled people who had come to the hospital out of fear, taking up resources meant for the sick and wounded.

So, that's what Henry had been writing about. The events in the city, the amount of people wounded by what was happening, he only needed internet, and a computer, and then he could publish what he had, and be an even more famous journalist.

Some coffee would be nice too. A Lungo di frappucini la mocha, black, with extra sugar.

And maybe if those people making a ruckus at the hospital entrance would calm down.

Wait, a ruckus at the entrance? Maybe it was newsworthy? Henry chose to go look what it was all about, and was shocked when he saw the mayor, accompanied by several, well, minions, for lack of better word. A few of them were professional looking men and women, one of them he recognized as the mayor's aide that wanted him to change his articles. Then there were a few, well, hooligans. The type of lower class poor oppressed person that looked really fucking scary with a spiked baseball bat.

"Greetings, loyal populace" The mayor said. And what Henry saw when he took a better look at her, and the people immediately surrounding him, truly spooked him. Those weren't people, they were clothing store dummies, walking around.

So the rumour that the mayor had been Hallucca, was true.

She continued, once people had started paying attention to her. "It is I, your rightful ruler. I have decided that the time for subterfuge is over. From now on, you will serve me with your life. You live only by my mercy, you breathe only by my mercy, and you shit only because I allow it. Do you understand!?"

Everyone went silent, not sure what to do about this. Had she gone insane? Why were these people armed? Why wasn't the mayor wearing any shoes?

Then, one of the onlookers decided to speak up, and say what they were all thinking."Are you insane?"

He shouldn't have said that. Hallucca looked at him, and started talking again. "Insane? Insane? You think I am insane? You dare talk to me like that? You dare fucking speak to me?" The man's clothes started changing colour, and texture. The legs of his pants started twisting, constricting around him. He screamed, blood pouring from the bottom of his pants. Then, he fell over, his legs no longer capable of holding his body up.

Hallucca looked over the rest of them. "Does anyone else want to question my authority?"

Quite obviously, no-one did.

*** Henry ***

The hospital had an office, that office had a printer. That printer, was working for Henry.

Good old-fashioned resistance publishing. He'd made pamphlets, denouncing the mayor, their new 'LORD AND MASTER'. Then, he was going to spread them all over town.

Ann, in the meantime, was making a fuss about Sely being missing. The girl had probably just found some other place to take refuge, there was no reason to believe she was hurt or in trouble. Still, one of his rival journalists had talked to her about it, a guy from the next city over. He'd come in by car, and asked people about what exactly was going on. The fool, the real money was in a popular uprising against their new overlord, not in investigative reporting.

He looked over his pamphlets, masterfully crafted, inspired by old WWII propaganda posters. They were amazing, and would tell the people who their new/old ruler really was, and who to go to for hard-hitting journalism against her tyrranic regime.

They looked amazing, the only thing he'd have to do now was spread them around town. Thing is, he was tired, and hadn't slept all night. Besides that, there were other problems. The drinking water was contaminated, and it was getting harder to find things that were safe to drink. Two birds with one stone. He could give the pamphlets to the people looking for water to spread around town, that way, everyone would read them!

*** Henry ***

He should not have done that. Everyone in town had read his pamphlets, including Hallucca. She'd come for him, at the hospital, which now had neither windows nor parking lot, let alone power. He wasn't quite sure what else had happened, he ran the moment he heard Hallucca was looking for him. He'd managed to make his way home through the ruined city.

People were patrolling, the water was being hoarded by people selling it for ridiculous prices, half the buildings were destroyed. His apartment complex was still okay, for now. He looked over his stuff, he'd have to get out of town quickly, if Hallucca was after him. But what to bring?

Eventually, he decided on taking some clothes, his bank statements, his typewriter and his original Sumatran coffee machine, which for some reason said M.I.C. on the bottom.

He hiked his bag on his shoulder, grabbed his mountain-bike and helmet, and made his way out of town as fast as he could. Not that fast, after all, the typewriter was quite heavy, but fast enough. Unless they used a car, Hallucca's people wouldn't be able to find him and get retribution for the pamphlets.

Late in the evening, when he'd arrived in a nearby town not under Hallucca's control, his thought went out to his girlfriend. Would Hallucca take out her anger on Annabelle, or even Sely, if she couldn't find him? Probably not, right?


	16. Chapter 3,4

**Gadget 3.4**  
The guy that grabbed me was, all in all, nice about it. Sure, he'd taken me prisoner for no reason, but he wasn't a dick about it. At first, he just pushed me forward to where he wanted to go, but when he figured out in what kind of state I was, and in what kind of state my shoes were, he'd decided to just lift me up and carry me over his shoulder like a bag of flour. It was… rather uncomfortable, but not as bad as having to walk around blind in the state I was in.

That did mean, however, that I had no idea where we were going. And he wasn't talking much on that front either. He'd said "I'm sorry" and "I really don't want to do this but I have to" a couple of times, but that felt really hollow given that he was kidnapping me.

After a while, he set me down. "We're not there yet… I'm just sort of tired…" He said. At that, I cheered up.

"But not too tired to use my taser" He continued. Aaaand there went my happy mood. I wasn't quite sure what he was doing, but he kept one hand on my shoulder, and with the other he was doing… something. A few seconds later I figured it out, he was drinking something, probably a water bottle. That got my mouth watering. Drat, I really didn't want to owe this guy anything, but now that I thought about it, I was kind of thirsty.

"Can I have some?" I said, hoping he'd agree to my request.

"Sorry girl, I only have so much money to spend."

Really, that was his excuse? It was water, cheapest liquid around… Still, I wasn't going to beg from this guy. He was the type of mall-cop that couldn't even stop a gaggle of seniors. Literally.

After a minute or so, I heard footsteps coming, and some people chatting. One of the patrols? They came closer, and started talking to the asshole that was holding me.

"Mister Gardner, I see you've caught another teenager. Rebellion against her majesty's authority again I presume?"

"Nothing that small this time Sir, I've brought something big Sir."

"I see, well, you can hand her over to me, I'll make sure she gets to her majesty safe and sound."

Her majesty? Seriously? Psycho-mayor was calling herself _majesty_? Was she insane?

Stupid question, of course she was.

"No need sir, I can handle the girl on my own, I wouldn't want to waste your time on something like this, I know a man as important as you are must be very busy."

Well, my captor knew how to kiss ass alright.

"Yes, yes, of course. Johnson, escort them to the tertiary hideout, then find her majesty."

"Sure thing boss." A new voice replied. This one sounding a lot less… sophisticated, I guess the word was.

The sophisticated sounding man, done with the conversation, exchanged some more pleasantries with my captor, Mister Gardner apparently, and left with most of his group.

The only one remaining was Johnson. I knew this, not because I could see him, or because he said anything. No, I knew because I could smell him. He smelled like something rotten. No, that wasn't the right description. It was more like, he smelled like the idea of rotting itself. Was he one of the people who got powers from the drugs? Or did he have real powers? For once, I was kind of happy I was wearing a blindfold, I could only imagine from what kind of mouth that smell could come.

"Well then, here we go" Gardner said, grabbing me by my waist and throwing me over his shoulder again. The second part of our little trip was even more uncomfortable, given the smell, and the fact that Gardner was walking faster now that he had to follow someone.

Every time he moved my, my body hurt, and I thought about how to escape. Still, the problem was that I simply didn't know how. I could try something with my powers, summon some sort of stabby slicey tool, use a power saw to cut through my handcuffs somehow, but then what. I was in no state to run far, there were patrols everywhere, I had no weapons, and people would figure out I was the girl that had thrown Hallucca's drugs in the lake quite quickly. I wasn't quite sure why Gardner had taken me, but given the time-frame, I was pretty sure it wasn't because he thought I was Horn's 'little assistant'. Thus, they probably didn't know yet, and whatever Hallucca wanted from the 'little assistant', it was probably not as bad as what he wanted from my cape persona.

Regarding that, I'd settled on Gadget as a name. My power was, basically, creating Gadgets, but the problem was telling other people my cape name. What I wanted to do was stay in the shadows, steal what I needed, and not have anyone know enough about me to go after me. But, if no-one knew about me, no-one would know who I was. You couldn't get famous as a master thief if you never got caught.

Maybe I should leave some sort of calling card. Some sort of sign that it was me that did it. That would make me famous. But, if I got famous, people would go after me. But, if I didn't get any recognition because no-one knew about me, what would be the point. You know, besides the massive amounts of loot.

*** Gadget ***

Once we'd arrived at the 'tertiary' hideout, Gardner had put me down on some sort of couch or something, before chaining my leg to something. He didn't take of the blindfold, and my hands were still tied behind my back, but at least I could finally sit down, sort of.

I don't know how long I was there, only that it was way too long and way to boring. If only I had some sort of lenses that could detect wavelengths of light that could pass through the blindfold. That'd work, except because those wavelengths didn't translate exactly… maybe I could translate a single wavelength instead of a wide spectrum? See the world in ultraviolet black and white? That'd help. Or infrared, see heat through this thing, see people? Or maybe do it so one eye saw infrared, the other ultraviolet, with two different lenses?

While thinking about how the hell to connect a power source, I heard something. Or rather, I didn't hear anything. There'd been people walking around in the background ever since I got here, talking, laughing, yelling, and making weird noises I couldn't quite recognize. And right now, they all stopped. After half a minute or so, I could hear a conversation between Gardner and someone else, A female voice I sort of recognized. Hallucca?

After another minute or so, the talking stopped, and I could hear high-heeled footsteps coming towards me. Tock tock tock tock. The sound of impending doom. There was a rhythm to it, to her walking. To all walking in heels really. Could I do something with that? Catch the frequency of the sound-source and get information from that? Like a police siren that changed tone? The tock's themselves were stationary, but I could probably get around that problem somehow, using a few more advanced tricks. Then, I could create an algorithm that perfectly tracked the location and velocity of any and all high-heeled women walking on floors within hearing range.

While I was thinking about the tracking system, the blindfold fell away. I looked, and saw Hallucca, the mayor, sitting in a chair in front of me. Looking at me. She seemed angry, frustrated, but somehow in control. Both in general, and of herself. She was wearing a weirdly anachronistic outfit. It sort of looked like a suit, but the colours were wrong, white, blue, gold. I could see a fur trim behind her head. I could see the same symbol that Gardner had worn, the French flower thingy.

Behind her stood some sort of minion, it sort of looked like the deranged mannequins she had with her before, but made out of metal, and less deformed. They didn't move, and looked like they were statues or something, incapable of moving at all.

The room itself looked nice. It looked like it was some rich guys' living room just a few days ago. Way too much glass furniture, but a big TV screen. That, and it had very few windows, usually, rich houses had a lot of those, it was 'hip' and 'trendy' to have floor to roof glass instead of walls, but not here.

I wondered why Hallucca was looking at me. Was she going to hurt me? I felt her gaze sweep over me, looking at my face, my clothes, then my feet. They weren't as cold as they were before, the house was somehow still warm, but they kind of hurt. In the end, she looked sharply at my sleeve. The arm I'd cut open on the garbage container. My makeshift bandage hadn't done the job, and the sleeve was getting a red tint. As I watched, the thread started unraveling. It wasn't that he original thread came out of it. More like, new threads were pulled out of the overall material, and the overall mass was shifting into that. Her power was weird and scary.

I looked away from my arm, back at the mayor. She had an intense gaze in her eyes. She looked somehow stable, but also not. She didn't notice, and was placing all her attention on my arm. She reminded me of an alligator. Perfectly calm, until something happened and she sprang into action in a crazy frenzy. Ready to rampage at a moment's notice.

I looked back at my arm. My bandage had been removed, and new cloth had been winding itself around my arm. Suddenly, the wound started stinging, and I winced a little.

At that, Hallucca stood up and walked toward me. She squatted, a little bit, not enough to bring her head level with mine, but still coming closer. Her right hand reached forward, and held my face. Her fingers were cold, from being outside, and they felt wet too.

"There is no need to cry, little one" She said.

I wasn't sure what she meant by that. I was fourteen-and-a-half, and I didn't cry. Only stupid little girls cried. And, now that I thought about it, Dad had also cried a little when I had visited him. Just a little though, he was a grown-up man.

But me, no, I wasn't crying. I never cried.

She waited a few minutes. I could feel the handcuffs keeping my hands behind me opening, my hands once again free. My leg was still chained to the couch I was sitting on, but it was definitely an improvement.

While I was rubbing my wrists, which were red from the handcuffs, the mayor's left hand reached forward as well, messing with my hair. Eventually, when she was done with whatever she was doing, she looked me in the eyes again, I had no idea what kind of expression was on her face, it was like she wanted three different things at once. One hand still caressed my face, even though she was dangerous, it felt kind of nice, comforting. Mom didn't do stuff like that.

She spoke, slowly, thinking carefully about her choice of words. "Tell me, child, how are you related to Henry Watson, the..."She was about to say something when she thought better of it, and started anew. "the journalist and insurgent."

Wait, Henry? What did she want with Henry? I thought she was after me, or, at least, Gadget. What did she want with Henry? And what exactly did insurgent mean again? Had he sold her faulty insurance or something? No, that didn't make any sense, Henry was a journalist, and there was no such thing as insurance for supervillains. Probably.

Now how was I going to reply to her? Truthfully? Maybe, at least partly. If she got angry, I could just tell her I hated him, she'd probably like that right? Which meant she wouldn't hurt me.

"I… Uhmmm… He's, like, my mom's new boyfriend."

She thought about my answer for a bit, then removed her hand from my face. "I need to know something young lady." She said, she sounded more like a school-teacher than a supervillain. "I need you to give me an honest answer. I'll know if you lie, I have that power. Do you understand?"

Wait, she had lie detection powers too? Or was she bluffing? But calling her on it if it wasn't a bluff would be a really bad idea.

"Yes miss." I replied.

Her hand went up again, quickly this time, she pointed a correcting finger at me. "Yes your majesty, is the correct way to address me."

Really? She was going with that? Still, I was in no position to protest.

"Yes your majesty" I repeated.

She looked happy at that, she probably wasn't doing the majesty thing to cultivate some sort of aura of authority, but instead just because she really liked it when people called her that.

"Now then, where do your loyalties lie young lady? Do they lie with me, your rightful queen, or with the traitor Henry, like your mother."

That shocked me. My mother? What had happened to her? Had she been loyal to Henry, whatever that meant? Was she alright? Or, at least, still alive? I knew we didn't have a very good relationship, but I didn't want her to get hurt. Still, it hadn't been the first time that one of her boyfriends had come to bit her in the ass, but, if she was hurt. What the hell was I going to answer. I just didn't want to get hurt, but if I didn't give her the right answer she'd hurt me, and if I lied to give the right answer she'd also hurt me.

Halucca grabbed something from a pocket, a handkerchief of some sort, which she used to gently rub at my face. The handkerchief was damp, had it already been used?

I had to admit, I kind of like this gentle side of the crazy maniac in front of me. Fucked up as she was, it felt somehow, well. I wasn't sure what word to use. It didn't remind me of my mother, it was more like my dad, but also not. They were both weird about it, but dad just because he didn't really know me and was kind of a let-down, while this woman was being weird because she was a crazy parahuman supervillain.

I wasn't sure of anything? Was I loyal to Henry? No. I liked his camera, and he was better than mom's last boyfriend, but ultimately, he was just some guy that would be gone in a month or two.

But loyal to Hallucca? What would that even mean? She was kind of nice right now, but at the same time also completely terrifying. Maybe she couldn't detect a lie if I sort of skirted around it? Phrase it uncertainly? I had no idea how her hypothetical lie detection power worked.

"I guess if I had to choose I'd be loyal to you your majesty." Was my answer. It was true, sort of. Right now, the choice where I chose to be loyal to her was superior, so that'd be my choice if I had to choose. Would that work?

Hallucca smiled, not the crazy smile you'd expect from a supervillain that had taken over the city. Then, she hugged me for some reason.

I guess she believed me?


	17. Interlude: Assault

**_Interlude: Assault_**

One of the perks of working for the government was the benefits. Usually, that just meant the healthcare included dental. In the case of the protectorate, it meant transportation with high-tech jets.

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the entire protectorate. In fact, Assault was pretty sure it was just his boss that got that benefit. Armsmaster had served as consultant for some sort of engine design that was supposed to be more efficient and better for all the cute little forest creatures, and the producer of the engine had given one of the prototypes to him in return.

Okay, so maybe not exactly as a direct gift to Armsmaster, but rather to the PRT, but the PRT had stationed it in a hangar near Brockton Bay, and Armsmaster was the boss in Brockton Bay, so the effect was the same.

Still, he hadn't thought that Colin could actually fly this thing.

The plane was barebones, consisting of a cockpit, two wings, and some landing gear, but the cockpit was large enough for them to sit comfortably side by side. In the end, calling "shotgun" hadn't been necessary, as there were only two seats.

"So boss-man, can I drive this thing?" He asked, looking hopefully at the flight stick before him. Before he got his powers, Ethan had been a master at Rogue Squadron, so he was pretty sure he'd be awesome at this.

"Didn't know you had your license." He replied, short and to the point.

"license schmicense, come on, nobody will know."

"Actually, Assault, Due to the experimental nature of this vehicle, everything we say is recorded."

Well drat, Armsmaster, as always, knew how to spoil the mood.

Ethan decided to amuse himself by looking out the window instead. He couldn't see much, courtesy of all the clouds they were flying above, but there were some nice formations, one of them reminding him of his fiancé, it looked just like a puppy.

He was disturbed by the ringing of his phone. Armsmaster looked at him, annoyed. "You should've turned that off."

Assault replied, "Really, a plane that you worked on, and it still can't handle mobile phones?"

"isn't the reason why." He replied.

He looked at the screen, and identified who was calling him.

Great…

He accepted the call, and held the phone to his head. "Hi boss, what's up."

"Very funny Assault, very funny." The rather unamused voice of director Piggot came out of the speakers.

He wondered for a second, had he made a joke? Then he got it, _what's up_ , they were on a plane. He evidently still had it, even subconsciously

"Thanks boss, I aim to please!" He replied, knowing all too well that no-one who had ever spend more than five minutes in his presence would believe that.

"Let's get to the point. Tell Armsmaster that he is to turn that plane around right this moment, and that there will be consequences for this behaviour. I have _not_ approved this little outing and we cannot lose two of our protectorate members to some little town in the middle of fucking nowhere."

Daaaamn she was angry. Not that that was anything new, angry seemed to be one of her favourite emotions.

"Boss man, boss ma'am is telling us to turn around, says she can't miss the two of us, though I think it's mostly you she can't do without." he replied, a heavy wink on the last part of the sentence. Piggot was somewhat older than Colin, but they both desperately needed to get some. Also, the delicious internet speculation that would flow forth from that would be amazing.

That's when Armsmaster replied to Piggot directly, he fiddled with a button on a computer screen, and managed to connect Assault's phone to the communication system of the plane itself. "No need to worry, it's not just me and Assault going."

Wait, not just the two of them? This was new to Ethan. Were they not going on a spirit-quest to find the fountain of eternal bro-dom together?

"Armsmaster I don't care who else you brought into this crazy little outing of you. The main office can send a team if and when they deem it necessary."

At that, Armsmaster started making a weird throaty noise. It took a second or two before Ethan figured out what he was doing "kghhh kghhhh… I'm sorry Piggot I can't understand kghhhhkghhh you're breaking kghhhhgh kghhgh going through a tunnel kghhhkghhh".

That's when Armsy broke the connection. Strange, Ethan hadn't thought the man had had it in him to do stuff like that.

Break up a call with a really shitty excuse? Sure, fit the man perfectly. Do so without the use of a dedicated piece of technology? That was just weird. He must've really hurried in preparing for this outing. 

*** Assault ***

The plane landed on a small airport, the kind used by enthusiasts and the like, somewhere south of their destination. Colin had been sparse with the details, but he'd been able to figure some things out. Apparently the "city", if you could call it that, (you couldn't unless you lived there.) was one of Roidmaster's testing grounds. Roidmaster being the guy that, until a few days ago, was the newest member of the merchants.

The villain had left town after his activities had gained too much attention, both from the law, and buyers using some extra persuasion. Rumour had it he'd wanted to join the toy-box, but hadn't been accepted.

There was one other plane that had recently arrived, and Ethan was rather shocked to see Chevalier standing beside it, talking to someone.

Armsmaster gestured, and they started walking towards Chev. Once there, Armsy and Chevvy gave each other a firm handshake, and Armsmaster started talking.

"Thank you for coming at such short notice, I hope it hasn't been too inconvenient?"

Chevalier looked at Armsmaster, then at Ethan. How well did they know each other? Assault had met Chevalier before, at events, fights, and other such things, but he hadn't really spoken to him.

"No problem, but tell me, what's this all about?"

"Can it wait? It'll be easier to wait with explanations until Myrddin and Mouse Protector arrive." He replied.

Myrddin and Mouse Protector too? How the hell had Armsmaster gathered this little team so quickly?

While they were waiting, the person Chevalier was talking to introduced himself as Blake Johnson, head of the local PRT office. It being literally that, an office.

About five minutes later, Myrddin arrived with mouse protector in tow. Myrddin, also gave Armsmaster a firm handshake, but when Armsmaster's hand started extending towards Mouse Protector, she snuck past and gave him a hug instead.

If only he'd had a camera for this moment.

"So now that we're all here, could you explain the situation officer Johnson?" Armsmaster asked, after introductions and reunions were done.

Mouse Protector, the second best girl in the protectorate, after Battery of course, had taken position next to Ethan, and started whispering in his ears. "So, what's this really about?"

"Not entirely sure, and not my place to tell." He replied.

That's when he started paying attention to Johnson's briefing.

"For a couple of years now, we've had a local supervillain by the name of Hallucca. She ruled over the local underworld with an iron fist, and made quite a lot of money in the drug trade. We suspect that her powers consist of a large and varied arsenal of shaker effects, ranging from telekinesis to matter transmutation and time-space manipulation. However, she's always been limited by the erratic way in which she applies her powers. Our working hypothesis is that she uses drugs to hallucinate, and subconsciously applies varied effects to make her distorted worldview a reality. Her lack of control, and the fact that many of her powers were Manton-limited, meant that she wasn't a major player, outside of the massive amounts of structural damage she could cause."

Myrddin, Chevalier and Armsmaster were listening carefully, no doubt already forming plans to take her down, when Mouse Protector interrupted.

"You say she ruled over the criminals, and that she was limited. I'm guessing something changed?"

"Yes, he continued. First, she started getting supplies from a tinker called Roidmaster, based in Brockton Bay." He gave a short nod towards Armsmaster, and continued. "This caused the situation to escalate. Horn, a disgruntled ex-Protectorate employee turned vigilante, started actively chasing her down. It's hard to say what did more damage, the enhanced thugs, or Horns offensive against them. Eventually, this came to head in a city-wide chase during a blackout, and ended on the pier. The result being that Horn is missing, our water supply is tainted with power-granting drugs, and our local supervillain/mayor is attempting to control the city, styling herself as some sort of feudal lord."

"Wait," Chevalier interrupted. "supervillain slash mayor?".

"Yes, one of the few pieces of information that came to light when this all happened two days ago. It appears mayor Bourbon ruled both the city and its underworld."

"So we take out the mayor, find out what happened to Horn, and figure out how to clean the water supply." Chevalier declared, more a statement than a proposal.

"And we find the girl." Armsmaster added.

Myrddin chimed in, "All the while fighting off whatever suddenly empowered civilians decide to start attacking us."

"What's the local cape situation, besides Hallucca and Horn?" Ethan asked.

"Rodeo, the local protectorate, is a master-shaker. Makes people want to move in a predetermined direction. He's been trying to do damage control, keeping Hallucca and her minions, both animated mannequins and empowered thugs, from attacking too many civilians. He's semi-retired, usually just being send out to do crowd-control in possibly dangerous situations, making sure hordes of people don't trample each other, so he's not quite sure what to do in a situation like this, and not very good in a real fight.

Then there's our ward, Skip. Twelve years old and an orphan, she's a striker and a mover, can make anything she touches into an incredibly elastic medium, and affects local gravity as well. In effect, she can do a trampoline bounce on any surface, even walls and ceilings. She's immune to most physical damage, including bullets, which basically liquefy in impact, spreading the force out in both time and area. She's limited by the manton effect though, so if someone punches her, she's just your average twelve year old girl. Energy based attacks, fire or electricity, can also hurt her.

Finally, we suspect the presence of an unknown tinker, with a stranger sub-classification. However, we're not sure whether or not this tinker actually exists."

After that, Mouse Protector and Chevalier asked some more questions, regarding the layout of the town, police presence, and other such details. Myrddin was talking to Armsmaster, trying to figure out some way to clean up the water supply.

Five minutes later, they started walking towards the city, leaving Officer Johnson behind.

Chevalier was the one who broke the silence. "So, Armsmaster, what's the reason you called us here on such short notice? I understand it's important but I don't like having to cancel my meetings."

Armsmaster looked at the group, or, at least, Myrddin, Chevalier and Mouse Protector, and replied. "You guys remember that thing with Reaver on the cruiseship?"

Ethan was confused, Reaver? Cruiseship? He didn't know anything about this.

"Oh yeah, your first big mission wasn't it? We sure showed those guys didn't we, justice prevailed!" Mouse protector said cheerfully.

"Remember that girl, whatshername, Annabelle wasn't it? Couldn't pry you two apart with a crowbar." Chevalier said.

Wait a second, girl? Armsmaster? Together? So his suspicion had been right, Armsmaster did have a daughter.

Now that he thought about it, hadn't he heard Gallant say something about that once? Something about Panacea gossiping about a girl. The puzzle pieces were starting to fit together in his mind. Apparently, boring old hard-ass Armsmaster had been having fun with a groupie, and something had come from it.

"Yes, Annabelle. I'm afraid I… uhm… made a little mistake back then." Armsmaster admitted. It had to be hard for the man, admitting that.

Myrddin's eyes went wide. "Wait, so the missing girl?"

"Yeah…"

"Then we should make haste." Myrddin said, glaring at Mouse Protector with a look that told her not to make one of her trademark remarks. Ethan decided that that would probably also apply to him. 

*** Assault ***

"So whatcha saying is, you want me ta jump as high as ya can, and kick ya in the face?" The girl said, an incredulous look on her face.

Mouse Protector also looked like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "I thought I was the crazy one."

"Don't worry, don't worry, I have a plan."

"an the plan involves me kicking ya in the face?"

"Exactly, see, I said you were an intelligent young lady."

Neither Mouse Protector nor Skip looked very impressed. Still, the girl started bouncing. It was quite a sight to see. Every jump, she went higher and higher, the drain on energy being air resistance. Appearantly, the ground beneath her had near perfect efficiency in throwing her back up. Every time she hit is, the ground started deforming. At first, only beneath her feet, but once she got high enough to casually jump over trucks, temporary deformations started really wrecking the environment, the pavement sinking down with her. The moment she jumped up again, it instantly restored to its initial state.

After a minute or so, she took aim. When she landed, she landed feet first on Assault's face. He'd been prepared, and let the energy drive him forward, into the building they'd identified as holding several of Hallucca's lieutenants, or dukes as they were apparently called now. The moment he crashed through the wall, he redirected himself again, setting his palm on the ground, and using the energy to turn his body in a circle around it, swiping the legs from under the people in the room. They hadn't known if these people had some sort of power, so they'd decided to just go overkill and take them down as fast as possible, before they had a chance to show their cards. Mouse Protector popped in above him, and he held up his other arm to give her a boost. She was launched over the table in the middle of the room, towards the people on the other side, where she went to town.

Assault took down the thugs still standing on his side of the room, an empowered kick on the side of the knee here, someone getting launched to the ceiling there, when he heard a gunshot and Mouse Protector popped up next to him. He looked over the table, which was covered in, of all things, bottled water.

"Hands where I can see them!" the thug with the gun said, aiming it somewhere above Assault's head. The man obviously didn't have much experience with them. He also didn't quite look like your average drug, or bottled water, dealer. He was wearing an expensive suit, and had the kind of haircut bankers thought made them look really professional, and which was thus spoiled for everyone else. He brought his hands up, nothing as dangerous as a panicked man with a gun.

Nothing except for a parahuman that could turn into a dragon of course, or one that could make metal spikes appear wherever he wanted to, or who could cut through buildings with a flick of her hands. But it was more dangerous than Skidmark, so that was something.

Mouse Protector, however, chose to take the instructions in a more literal manner. She teleported over to just behind the man, holding her hands in front of his eyes. "Okay" she said, in her cheerful manner, before bringing her knee up into his groin.

They looked around the room. All of the other people lying on the floor in pain. The room was laid out in a simple manner. There was a table with bottles of water, there was another table next to it with a pile of money, and there were more pallets with water bottles stacked against the wall.

Skip walked in behind him, "shouldn't yaresthem or something? Also, can I kick you in the face again?"

*** Assault ***

As they walked up to the Armsmaster and Rodeo, Assault could see they hadn't had any luck either. At least, they hadn't had any luck in actually achieving their objectives. A rather impressive amount of thugs were lying on the street, knocked out, covered in foam, or otherwise incapacitated. Some of them seemed to have had powers, as Assault didn't think the more exotic types of damage to the environment were all caused by Armsmaster. That, and he wouldn't scorch his own armour for no reason.

"Any luck?" Armsmaster asked them, his voice sounding slightly tired, and Assault could see that his short beard had gotten damp.

"Well, we figured some stuff out, but not what we were looking for. You find any important info?"

"Nothing much, except that there's a lack of information. None of the people we interviewed had any knowledge about the location of Horn, Sely's location, or Hallucca's main stash. Some information on Hallucca's position, but that's probably outdated by now."

"Same on our side, although we didn't find what we expected. Apparently Hallucca had chosen to recruit her lieutenants from the upper crust of Westlake society. We captured several business looking types hawking bottled water. Believe it or not, the mark-ups were even higher than they usually are. Seems like the water situation is worse than we expected."

"So you didn't find a sample of her drugs? Too bad, It would've helped in finding some sort of countermeasure. Still, I wonder if I can't set something up with Myrddin to suck all the water in the lake through some sort of filter… Pull the foreign particles out with nano-beads, add a binding agent for the remnants… Let's stay on focus though, you guys get any word from Myrddin and Chevalier?"

"Not yet, I hope they had more luck on their end." Assault replied. This whole situation was a crazy mess, he could only hope they didn't have to evacuate the entire town, and for Hallucca's sake, that little Sely was still alive.

A blank stare appeared in Rodeo's eyes, and Skip said that he always got like that when focusing on his powers. A couple of minutes later, three more thugs walked into view, saw them, and started running. They looked like they were running away, but somehow, they were running towards the thing they were running away from. Interesting power, that Rodeo, he wondered what the limits were. Was it just panicked people? Was it perfect control? Could he control animals? Robots? Angry lovers?

Armsmaster took a few steps forward, looking like he'd done this a few times before. One of the thugs held out his hands, and launched out his fingernails, which looked incredibly painful, and did in fact result in the guy bending over in pain. The fingernails however, were blocked by a swing of Armsmasters halberd. The second attacker was taken down by a swift grappling hook to the stomach. Armsmaster jumped forward, assisting by the pull of his grappling hook, and started interrogating the duo, asking for the location of Hallucca, the whereabouts of Sely Pierce, the location of their headquarters, the whereabouts of Sely Pierce, the location of the vigilante Horn, and last but most certainly not least, the whereabouts and condition of Sely Pierce.

*** Assault ***

About half an hour later, they'd found Myrddin and Chevalier. Chevalier was perfectly fine, although covered in dust and mud a little. Myrddin however, was wearing an actual bathrobe, rather than a pretend wizard robe.

The two had called them from the local water treatment plant, where apparently, Hallucca had ordered some people to try and salvage some of Roidmaster's product. They'd attacked it, and driven off the defenders, after which Hallucca had retaliated. She'd made some sort of stone golems walk forwards and attack them, which were quickly destroyed by a few swings of Chevalier's gunblade. However, the debris then continued forward, only stopping when Myrddin sucked it into a pocket dimension. That was the moment that Hallucca created new golems out of the ground beneath the two of them. When Chevalier retaliated by shooting at the ground somewhere in front of where they suspected she was attacking from as a warning shot, she'd escalated by trying to warp their equipment. Apparently, Chevalier's stuff was at least partially immune. But Myrddin's robe and staff had been warped beyond recognition. They themselves had made it out, the Manton effect protecting them, and Hallucca had retreated after failing to disable Chevalier's gunblade.

They'd decided to make camp, and call the rest of us over so that Armsmaster could fiddle with the water plant, and hopefully create some sort of solution to the contamination problem. They'd also created some sort of temporary room to hold their plethora of prisoners in, until they could find a better way to hold them. Thinking back on it, Assault remembered that they'd completely ignored the businessman they'd caught. How annoying, working without PRT back-up.

Tonight, they would create a new plan, given their new knowledge of the situation. The streets were emptier than they had expected, and there was no-one who knew anything about what exactly had happened with Roidmasters product, except that they'd contaminated the water supply, nor did they know anything about the whereabouts of Horn and Sely.


	18. Chapter 3,5

**Gadget 3.5**

"Well then sweetie, let's see what I can do for you." The woman said. She looked to be about thirty, thirty-five years old. She had a smile on her face, but not a nice one. It looked like the smile of someone pretending to be happy. A fake smile plastered on her face so long it just decided to stay there.

After hugging me for some reason, 'Queen Paige' had ordered someone to bring me to this woman, including some sort of remark about what kind of cup I was bearing. Was this woman going to get me a bra? Still, she seemed nice enough, and I liked being able to walk around.

That was it though, I couldn't do much more. There were still some guards here. People with guns, and some of the semi-powered variety. Not many though, it seemed like most of them were constantly patrolling the city.

"First of all, let's get you out of those unbecoming clothes you're wearing shall we?" She said, still smiling.

Me, I wasn't smiling. Paige's absurd behaviour, the guards, my mom, the fact that I was quickly getting sick, and then that, apparently, I was going to have to strip, didn't make for a good mood.

The fake-smile in front of me saw my apprehension, and took a look at the few guards standing around. We were in some sort of high-end clothing store turned supply room. "Go on then, turn around you guys, It's not polite to stare at a lady like that."

They obeyed her, and turned around, while the woman in front of me started helping me out of the hoodie. Below that, I wore a shirt that was becoming rather wet and dirty with sweat these last few days, and then, well, you know.

Inspecting a few of the burns on my arm, she decided to take away my shirt as well. I tried to protest, but she was rather forceful about it, and I wasn't really in any state to stop her.

Once that was done, she started on my burns. Stinging disinfectant, followed by a rather professional looking bandage around the worst ones, and fancy band-aids on the smaller burns. It hurt, but the real problem was the cold. The front of the store we were in wasn't exactly what you would call intact.

"Almost done young missus, now, let's get you your new outfit." She said, before running to a rack of weird-looking clothes.

Should I ask her a question? What would she do if I asked the wrong question? Not saying anything unless absolutely necessary was starting to feel like a pretty good idea lately, but I did want to know what was going to happen.

She returned with a frilly piece of white cloth, and a measurement tape. When she started measuring my sizes, I decided to start asking questions.

"Why does the Mayor want my cup size?"

She looked at me, fear and shock in her eyes. Then, she recovered her fake smile again.

"Well sweety, you should know better, because _Queen Bourbon_ doesn't want your cup size, she wants you to bear cups."

Okay… What the hell did that mean? How were baby bears involved? Had Horn punched some? I also couldn't help but notice the way she said the words Queen Bourbon, as if it was important that she said those specific words, and not just Hallucca. That was stupid, she wasn't here right? So she didn't have to kiss her ass.

Or did Hallucca have super-hearing as well? In addition to her lie detection powers? Then I had just made a mistake.

Once she was done with my measurements, she started working on the piece of cloth. It looked fancy, but a bit old fashioned. There was an intricate lace pattern to it.

From how she was working, it didn't look like she did this professionally, more like a hobby thing. She was rushing the job right now, as I could see from the times she pricked herself with a needle. I wondered what her job was before the entire city went crazy. Not seamstress, probably? What kind of job would give you a fake smile like that.

Now that I thought about it, that could probably be almost any job. Waitress, Service Desk Phone Person Thing, Receptionist, Secretary, Mascot at abandoned Theme Park.

It was probably that last one, she kind of looked like a deranged costumed animal thing that didn't move when you hit it with your flashlight.

Which, you know, would be cool.

A flashlight that made people freeze that is, not a deranged mascot thing. It'd probably sing some sort of weird freaky song.

So how the hell would I freeze people, and Theme Park Mascots, with a flashlight? The easiest way would be to fuck around with time or something, but I had no idea how to do that.

Maybe some sort of forcefield projector that just filled everything with forcefield particles, or whatever forcefields were made out of? Stop everything from moving?

But then I could just make some sort of containment foam thingy.

That said, Invisible containment foam sounded like it could be absolutely hilarious. From what I'd seen of it on the internet, there were quite a few different things you could do with it besides imprison people.

Once again, I was pretty sure I was the best damned Tinker in the world, Dragon sure as hell didn't have invisible containment foam. Sure, I didn't either, but that was only a matter of time, probably, maybe, hopefully.

Or, maybe, Dragon did have invisible containment foam, and no-one knew because it was invisible. If that was the case, I'd have to rob her blind. That would mean she couldn't see her invisible containment foam anymore.

So, first step, how was I going to get to Canada? I was pretty sure Dragon lived in Canada. Could I steal another car and drive there? Probably, I just had to go North and I'd reach Canada. But then…

I was pretty sure Canada didn't have roads, after all, they had mounties because cars wouldn't work. And dragon had flying suits too, so she wouldn't be bothered by all the polar bears.

But then, I distinctly remembered Canada also had cities. So did they have roads in the cities? Probably, It wouldn't make any sense not to have roads in cities. Then what would be in between the buildings? And how did normal people who weren't mounties or owners of giant robot-suits get around? Did they all have horses? Teleporter networks? Or did they just drive off-road? Maybe they all had Monster Trucks instead of normal cars.

But Monster Trucks were an American thing, they all had giant flags and stuff.

"Penny for your thoughts?" The smiling woman interrupted.

She was holding her hands behind her back, carrying something she was keeping from my sight. Was this a test? Was she going to do something if I didn't tell her what I was thinking? If I was thinking the wrong things? No, probably not, she didn't seem like the type. Still, it couldn't hurt to be careful.

"Do you think everyone in Canada has a horse?" I replied.

She looked at me with a weird look in her eyes, before holding a hand to my forehead and mumbling something to herself. Once she had reassured herself, she answered "Of course not silly, they ride around on Mooses, Meese, whatever the word for more than one is. Now, close your eyes please. It'll be more fun that way."

I wondered what her definition of fun was. Mine didn't include closing my eyes and getting a surprise from a total stranger.

Still, Moose, I should've thought of that. They were big, could probably hold a whole family.

When I didn't close my eyes, the woman wagged a finger at me. "Close your eyes girl, or do I need to tell the queen you didn't listen?"

So, yeah, closing my eyes seemed like a much better idea now.

When I closed my eyes, the woman started pulling something over my head, probably the outfit she'd just made for me. It was a bit tight, form fitting. Not something that felt like I could run around in it, but not all that uncomfortable either. When she was done, she grabbed me by the shoulders and guided me around to some place.

"Open your eyes!" She said, her voice cheerful and proud.

I opened my eyes, and saw I was standing in front of a mirror. The first thing I noticed was my face. I had bruising around my ear, and some red strips, probably from a branch I ran into last night. My eyes were red from exhaustion. Then, I noticed my hair.

The last year or so, I'd dyed the tips of a few strands of hair every now and then, with whatever colour I felt like. I was pretty sure that, right now, I was supposed to have some red, some black, an iron metallic looking bit, and one on the side that was striped, both white and blue.

Mom hated it when I did it, said it would ruin my hair and that it made me look like a tramp. When I retorted that fucking a different guy every month also made you look like a tramp, she'd grounded me.

Spending all day indoors however, meant that I only had more time to experiment. Also, I didn't wear my hair long like she did, so even if I goofed up, it'd grow back in a bit anyway.

The problem, however, was that they were currently missing. My hair was just its normal blonde colour. Not only that, I was also pretty sure it was longer than the last time I looked in the mirror, which was yesterday. What the hell had happened to it? Did my power make my hair grow?

Once I was done looking at my own face, I inspected the clothes I was now wearing. From the beginning of my torso, down to just below the knees, the fabric was solid white. It looked and felt like it was high quality, soft but sturdy. Around my neck, there was a thick lace pattern. It felt warm, covering my neck like that. That reminded me, my Christmas present, the big, long, warm, shawl/scarf my dad had given me. It had still been in my room when I left… Did that mean it was gone now? Had Hallucca…

This wasn't the time to think about that, I didn't want to think about that.

I looked at my arms. From the shoulder downwards, my sleeves were also made out of the same white lace pattern. When I looked closely, I could see the same weird sign on it that I'd seen all day, some French flower thing that was on the really old flags, I remembered that from some of the games I'd played.

The smiling Theme-Park Woman had walked of, and was rummaging through a drawer somewhere. When she returned, she had knee-high white socks, and some high-heeled shoes with her.

No, she wouldn't. Not that, I hated that. The last time I'd tried, I'd fallen over while standing up to go to the bathroom in a restaurant. I'd been covered with spaghetti sauce, and twisted my ankle at the same time. The guy that was mom's boyfriend back then, I couldn't even remember his name, had been some rich guy, and insisted that my mother bring me along. He hadn't been too bad, but mom had gotten really angry at me that I couldn't behave myself, shouting at me in front of everyone that I kept ruining stuff for her. It'd only gotten worse when the guy discretely broke up with her at the end of the evening. I'd really fucked up that day.

But yes, the heels were apparently for me. They weren't that high, but still. How could people walk around in those all day. They were uncomfortable, they looked stupid, and they made way too much noise.

While I was trying to put off wearing the shoes for as long as possible, a man in a suit walked into the building. He looked at the Mascot-woman, and spoke. "Is she ready?"

I recognized the voice, it was the guy leading the patrol that Gardner had run into when he was carrying me around.

The woman, meanwhile, snapped to attention. "Yes sir she's all wrapped up sir."

So this guy was a bigshot around here. I wondered what he wanted with me. Hell, I wondered what anyone wanted from me. It would be really nice to figure that out.

He walked forward, towards me. His suit looked expensive. He had a really fancy golden pen in his chestpocket, fancy rings on his fingers, and a belt-buckle made of what looked to be silver of something. I could also see a bulge at the side of his suit-jacket. A gun, or some other weapon. His hair was short, oiled, like something you'd see in that weird show about the fifties and rich people.

He looked at my feet, expectandly. I looked at the hidden gun again, and quickly put on the shoes.

He turned around, and put a hand over my shoulder, gently pushing me forward to walk alongside him. It hurt, he had his hand over one of my burns, but I kept the pain from reaching my face. I was far more focused on not falling over. Damn high heels, seriously.

When we were outside of the building, a few of the guards were starting to walk along with us.

"No need," he said to them. " I can handle one girl. Go drink some water, the good stuff."

At that, they went off, leaving the two of us alone.

"Well then young lady, let's have us a little talk shall we?" He said, looking at me.

I wasn't sure how to respond, and fell back on what had helped me before, I remained silent.

"You see, our dear Miss Mayor seems to have taken a liking to you. Now, I don't know how you've done it, but I can still use it. You see, used to be, in this town, everyone knew their place, and everyone did as they were told. The criminals worked for Hallucca, the law-abiding people worked for the Mayor, and everyone profited from the situation. Sure, there was crime, but it was under control. The criminals didn't get ideas above their station, and stayed in their little trailer parks. The hard-working folk were left alone to make money, and in return, whenever someone overdosed or got stabbed, he'd get free healthcare in the hospital."

His voice was slick, like a salesman. I wondered what his job had been. Probably something where he talked a lot, he seemed to be enjoying himself, while I was trying not to stumble.

"Now you see, the thing about Miss Bourbon, is that she's always had two sides to her. Like a coin, you see?" I nodded, not quite sure where he was going with this, but not wanting to interrupt him either. "On one hand, we have the honourable mayor, stalwart keeper of order, chairwoman of three different charities. On the other hand, we have Hallucca. A character that is, by working of her gifts, by definition deluded. Now, and this is important young lady, it might save your life, The thing is, she used to be able to switch. One moment she was the mayor, then, she takes a pill, and she becomes the fearsome Hallucca. Like Doctor Jeckyll. Now, the thing is, something went wrong. She had, what I believe is called a _'_ _second trigger'_. An event so traumatizing that someone with powers gets powers again. You might wonder, dear child, why this is relevant for you, and I shall tell you."

By Scion this guy loved hearing himself talk. Still, It was quite interesting. Was there some sort of Doctor that had given Hallucca powers because of drugs? Was she like the pill-maker? Or was Doctor Jeckyll a reference to something?

"In her mind, power and delusion are one and the same thing. And what happened, is that she now has constant control over her power. Thus, at the same time, I believe that this has caused her delusions to be constant as well. They are more defined, controllable, like her power, but they are also always there. Understand this girl. She is not pretending to be queen of Westlake, she is the queen of Westlake. And if you oppose her, she will crush you, like she crushed all opponents in the last two days. So too, does she believe me, her chief advisor, to be her loyal general. Thus, when she is near, that is how you shall address me. Do you understand?" I nodded my head. Call the guy with the hair general, I could remember that.

"Now you, young lady, are the daughter of her greatest enemy. I know what you're going to say, he's not your father, but it doesn't matter. You see, who this enemy is is not important, It will change according to the situation. Your position however, does not."

I thought about that. If this guy was right, her delusions seemed to be rather extensive. Was that her power, having broken something in her mind? And if she thought I was the daughter of her enemy, then why did she like me? That gave me an idea.

"So, she likes me because I'm the daughter of her enemy that now serves her?"

"Yes, very good, you're starting to understand. Now let's talk about your role in this. Paige wants you as her cupbearer. What that means, is that you will stand at her side, and whenever she wants something, you will hand it to her. You will not speak until spoken to, you will not complain and you will not move unless ordered to. Do you understand?"

That… sounded like a really boring job. Still, it was better than sitting blindfolded with my hands bound behind my back.

*** Gadget ***

Eventually, we arrived at the place where Hallucca was supposed to be. It was a house similair to the one I'd been kept in earlier. On one side of the room, a single chair stood, as some sort of throne or something. On the other side, there were several smaller chairs and a couch. The man, "O'Neill', he introduced himself, showed me to a table at the side of the room, and a minifridge. Hallucca was going to sit in the throne, and I was to bring her whatever she wanted to have. When he was done explaining, he left me alone in the room. I looked were a lot of little trinkets and other such things lying around, but I had a problem. The dress I was currently wearing didn't have any pockets, and it was too tight a fit to hide stuff in other places. And If I Blueprinted it, I wouldn't be able to do anything fun with it.

I grabbed a bottle of water, and enjoyed the warmth of the room together with the refreshing drink. I was a fancy goblet, probably Hallucca's, and a pitcher. If I remembered right from all the movies I'd watched, then wine would go into the pitcher from the bottle, then from the pitcher into the glass, and from the glass into someone's face. Sometimes by drinking, sometimes by throwing. The movies with throwing were usually better.

*** Gadget ***

I woke up, and stood up from the couch. Only half-falling over. There was a commotion outside, and I could hear people yelling "Yes your majesty".

Hallucca was here again. I quickly walked to the table where the drinks were, getting ready. Hallucca walked in, obviously distraught. Her hair was a mess, and there was dust on her dress.

After her came several other people, some wounded, others just tired.

Hallucca sat down in her throne, and waited for the others to sit down. When the others sat, she started, shouting.

"Why the fuck are there powered invaders in my city!"

She was livid, her face was red. The other people in the room were nervous. None of them willing to be the first to speak. I could see O'Neill sitting at the back, not as nervous as the rest.

"Are you all so incompetent you cannot answer my question?" Hallucca went on.

One of the people started saying something. "My queen I apologize my queen but they're the Protectorate my queen. They're here to arrest you your majesty!"

Hallucca became even more wild, she shouted again, spit flying out of her mouth with the words. "Arrested? Arrested? You cannot arrest a queen, do you insult me Robertus?" When she was talking, I could see her eyes focus in on the man. Specifically, his watch. The iron of his watch seemed to melt, and it started contracting, slowly crushing the bones beneath it. The man roared in agony, and I didn't want to watch anymore. Instead, I looked at the table I was standing next to, and pretended to be busy. I uncorked the wine, the mechanism, with the little corkscrew, was rather interesting. Then, I filled a glass and the pitcher, and brought the glass to Hallucca, who was still shouting. Hopefully she's be silent while drinking.

"M..M…Majes…Majesty?" I asked, hoping she wouldn't lash out at me too. I wasn't technically supposed to do this, O'Neill had told me to do nothing I wasn't told to do, but it seemed like she could use a drink.

She turned to me, and looked at the glass I was holding out for her. Again, one hand cupped the side of my face, while the other took the glass from my hand. She looked, I wasn't quite sure what the right word was. Guilty? Ashamed? She was calmer at least.

After a few seconds, she pointed at the ground a step behind and to the side of her throne, beckoning me to stand over there. Then, she returned to the people waiting for her. The guy she'd taken out her anger on was lying on the floor, but the rest was sitting on the various chairs and couches again, trying desperately to ignore the man.

"Well then, the invading army. Any ideas, general O'Neill?"


	19. Chapter 3,6

**Gadget 3.6**  
The rest of the meeting was rather interesting. They weren't quite sure what was going on, but they'd lost a lot of manpower, as well as the water treatment plant. Hallucca had gone to rescue the plant, and had encountered Mirdirr, mhyrdhini, myrdy... wizard guy, and sjevalyay… I wasn't even going to try his name. Anyway, Wizard and Sword had fought of Hallucca, and something else had taken down a lot of the patrols, probably Rodeo, I thought, given his powers.

The Queen had ordered her generals to come up with a plan of action, and the generals had kissed the queen's ass to hide the fact that they couldn't think of a plan. That made the queen happy, and the queen being happy made everyone in the room calm down.

Eventually, the meeting was over, and the queen started leaving, beckoning me to follow. As we left the room, the generals and other hanger-ons were starting to stand up and discuss amongst themselves. That I understood, class suddenly became interesting once the teacher left and you could goof around, but from what I could hear, they were talking tactics, not TV-shows. Why didn't they do that before, in the actual meeting?

Hallucca's heel clicked against the ground, and I looked at her again. She was waiting for me, a hand reaching out, more wine, I presumed. I poured some in the goblet I had with me, and made my way over there. Walking over the uneven brick sidewalk, I narrowly avoided stumbling and reached her, handing her the cup. She started slowly sipping, and looked around pensively.

It was a minute or two before she looked at me again, and said something.

"Tell me child, where do you wish to go?"

Another one of her weird questions I had no idea how to answer. What was she even asking? I really wanted to go home, but home was gone. I also wanted to go to Disneyland, but was pretty sure that wasn't what she meant. The hospital, to check on mom? Or maybe back into the forest? I hadn't expected my plot against Horn to go so well, and someone should probably check if he was alright.

Or maybe my hideout. The place where I stashed all the stuff that I couldn't just BluePrint. Could I build something to get me out of this mess? Or should I go see if I could find the Protectorate, wizard-man and supersword? Or would they think I was working for the queen when they looked at my outfit.

Was I working for her now? Did that mean I was in trouble with the law? You know, for something other than the thefts?

I pondered for a bit. Maybe something of my scarf remained in the wreckage of my house? I'd like my scarf back, it was amazing. An exact Replica of Maggie Holt's scarf, only bigger, and real, and my dad gave it to me. That had to be the best part of those books, Maggie had two dads, instead of my none. Beyond the present now and then…

Yeah, home sounded like a good idea.

"I.. I think I'd like to go home your majesty."

She looked at me, then looked in the direction of my home. Again, she seemed to think about something intensely. This time looking in different directions, comparing something. What the hell was she doing. Why had she even asked me where I wanted to go? Was she going to let me go?

After another few minutes, she looked at me again, and said in that soft tone of hers: "Be a dear, go inside and bring General O'Neill."

I looked at her, and nodded. Putting the jug of wine down, I ran inside.

At least, tried to run inside, these damned heels… I almost fell twice, but made it in one piece, walking slowly. Who the fuck had invented heels? Couldn't have been a tinker.

Once inside, I made my way through the small crowd, which had grown in the time I'd been outside. More of the well-dressed people, less of the druggies. One of the new arrivals had several bruises on his face.

When I finally found O'Neill, he was talking to someone. I looked at the two of them. O'Neill was wearing an expensive suit, a golden pen sticking out of the little pocket in the front. I could also see what was probably a wallet in one of his pockets. The man he was talking to was similairly dressed, but was wearing a heavy jacket on top of his suit, he'd been outside. His face was red, and he was huffing and puffing, his glasses slowly sliding down his sweaty nose.

"And you're sure they haven't found the secondary system?" O'Neill said, in a hushed tone.

"Yes sir, removed it while H was keeping them busy, they don't know a thing."

"Good, and the western operation?"

"We only have a few survivors here sir, they were taken completely by surprise. However, they relocated at least a part of the profit before being caught."

"Good, good."

"About that sir, wouldn't it be a better move to simply surrender? There's no way H can beat this many capes, let alone veterans, Protectorate team leader."

At the mention of surrender, O'Neil's face became dark. He leaned forward, until they were very close, and whispered something in the other man's ear. I couldn't quite hear what.

Then, O'Neill turned to another new arrival, a junkie, his arms were misformed, bigger, sturdier than you'd expect.

"We caught her sir." Was all he said.

"The lightning girl, I presume?"

Now that I looked, the junk had several weird burns, that could very well have been some sort of electro-attack. But lightning? From how they'd been talking, and the fact that she'd appearantly been caught, I presumed she wasn't protectorate. Another junky with pill-powers then?

As they were discussing what to do with lightning girl, I coughed. Not to raise attention, just because I was starting to get sicker as the day went on. I guess my little moment of spy-craft was over.

I wondered, where there parahuman spies? People who, by night, wore spandex and ran around shooting lasers from their elbows, but by day, took on a secret identity and did spy stuff?

Although, these days, you didn't really need external influence to destabilize countries. That tended to happen by itself.

I should really return my attention to the people in front of me though, instead of thinking about spies, and how kill-orders were kind of a reverse license to kill. Did the British have kill orders? And should I start talking now?

"Mister O'Neill, her majesty wants to talk to you."

He looked at me, obviously annoyed at the interference. I could only hope he didn't try to take it out on me.

"Lets go talk to her then." He replied, walking outside.

I wondered… why did it seem like he was the real boss, and not the person they all called queen. Who was this lightning girl, and what kind of secondary operation were they running? Hallucca didn't seem like the person to personally run a distraction to me, she was way too proud of herself the way she was right now. Had she known she was a distraction?

And why was O'Neill so opposed to people surrendering to the protectorate? They couldn't really win, could they?

I decided to follow him, and made my way after him. I only tripped once on my way there, and that was because someone totally bumped into me.

Also the heels.

I caught up when they were discussing where to go.

"North, we'll fortify ourselves in the high-school", Hallucca said.

North… Directly opposite home, if I was correct about our current location. 

*** Gadget ***

When we made our way there, the streets were remarkably empty, windows shut, lights off. It was starting to become evening. Luckily, it the walk to school wasn't that far.

School, of course, being one of the buildings that were still perfectly intact. Just my luck.

Once we'd arrived, the queen claimed the teachers lounge. Lying down on one of the overly large couches. That was just like a teacher, forcing children to sit on shitty wooden chairs while being massive couch potato's themselves.

Slowly, Hallucca started working on the surroundings. The school logo changing into the weird flower thing, 'Fleur de lys', Paige explained when she saw me looking at them. I wasn't sure how that was an explanation, but she seemed assured that that was what I'd wanted to know.

She also made the lamp glow. Not by turning it on, but by changing it into something else, I wasn't sure what. Her couch, too, became more and more comfortable.

I wondered what had happened to lightning girl, whomever that was. In fact, I didn't even know if she was a girl, maybe she was a fat old lady parahuman. Did that happen? Did old people get powers? Were there secret league's of underground senior capes, fighting over bingo rules or something?

Still, if she'd been taken prisoner, why hadn't they brought her to Hallucca? Had they forgotten?

I thought back to the conversation I'd overheard earlier. Were they hiding it from Hallucca? If she knew about a cape opposing her, she'd probably personally take care of it, not leave it to her flunkies.

So why would they keep her a secret from Hallucca? To cover up a failure?

I wondered, why hadn't any attacks on the west side of town come up in the earlier meeting? They're only talked about gunblade and staffmaster. Just how much was O'Neill keeping secret from Paige? He'd obviously been her lieutenant once, when she was more lucid, and he knew how she worked. If anyone wanted to manipulate her, he was in the perfect position.

I thought about confronting Hallucca, but how would she react? She liked me right now, I knew that, but what would she do if I accused her General of keeping secrets from her? Would she believe me or him?

After an hour or so of thinking about the problem in my head, and sitting on the floor next to Hallucca's couch in case she wanted something to drink, or needed someone to distract her away from torturing someone, fakeface macsmileypants came in. In her hand, several pizza's, the frozen one's they served in the cafeteria, heated up somehow.

After giving one to Paige, the woman took me aside.

"Hey sweetie, are you doing allright?" She asked, as if she really cared. She probably just asked so I would tell Paige that she was nice.

I still nodded, it'd be impolite not to reply, and maybe she would go away and give me my pizza.

"It's good to see you safe and sound." She said. " I can't believe what they did to that other girl."

Other girl? Were they talking about Zapmistress? Or whatever her name was?

"What other girl?" I asked, quietly. Gesturing towards Paige, who was currently very busy praising her factory-made pizza.

"The cape girl… Emma…. He just kept hitting her…" She looked at me, fear coming over her face. " look, forget I said anything… just… hold on for just a bit okay?"

I nodded, and she left again, leaving me to my pizza, and my revelation.

Emma was lightning-girl, and she was seriously hurt.

I needed to do something, I think. But… Hallucca. She was right here and… if she knew I was…

What the fuck was I supposed to do in a situation like this…

I could just let it be right… it wasn't my fault…. Not my responsibility…

I'm only fourteen years old… I got kidnapped twice in three days… I was a villain...

But I knew Emma… Sort of…

The project had been fun... And she wasn't a bitch like some people…

But… If Hallucca did to me what she did to that guy…

What she'd done to my mom…

…

…

…

Just what the fuck was I supposed to do…. Nobody ever talked to me about stuff like this… Not mom… certainly not her boyfriends…

I wondered... What would dad do?

He'd shipped me back to mom, but he'd been sad about it, and he'd made sure I'd been alright.

I wondered what Panacea would do in this situation. She'd been nice enough the one time I'd met her. Very inquisitive about me and dad, but still nice.

But how the hell was I supposed to use my powers here? I couldn't create a solve-everything tool out of nowhere…

But maybe, if I used the sleeper… Could I help her? No, I couldn't. Sely couldn't, and Gadget couldn't either.

But then again, these guys were all scared of their asses of parahumans, and they didn't exactly know that I couldn't do anything to help Emma. I'd just have to bluff my way through.


	20. Chapter 3,7

**Gadget 3.7**  
I thought about what to do while eating my pizza. First, I'd have to get rid of the queen, probably by getting her to fall asleep. My sleeper would probably work for that. Probably.

I hadn't actually tested it yet. From what I'd looked up on the internet, there were specific brainwave patterns associated with sleep. I wasn't sure how the hell there could be waves inside a brain, but whatevs. So, I'd recorded my own brain while falling asleep. If I was right, the sleeper would induce the same kind of condition. Hopefully, that would make people fall asleep. Or, you know, cause a brain aneurysm. Probably not, but maybe.

So what to do after she was asleep. I'd have to find Emma, free Emma, and help Emma escape.

Quite a task, given that I hadn't exactly managed to escape myself. Was I really in a position to help someone else?

On that topic, if I was going to do something, I'd need to protect my identity. I could summon my helmet, but… my current outfit was rather easy to recognize. Could I find something I could wear here in the school? Something I could use to cover my identity?

I looked at the queen, Hallucca, the mayor, was almost done with her pizza, and was looking at the small TV hanging on the wall. It wasn't on, because there was no power, but the screen was changing colours every now and then. It was weird, looking at her doing things like that, knowing who she was. Somehow, in my mind, they were all sort of different people, even though I knew they were the same person.

The mayor, I hadn't really known much about. She was in the local news every now and then, but I hadn't really paid any attention. There weren't any crazy sex scandals or anything around her like you'd see in TV-shows, and the city was generally pretty good, so I could only presume she was good at her job.

Hallucca, everyone in town had known about. Mom had often warned me, whenever I'd snuck out at night, that Hallucca would get me. Most people in school had been too afraid of her to even think of doing drugs. However, she was pretty elusive, only coming out once every couple of months. When that happened, people's homes would be ruined, roads got torn up, and people ended up in the hospital. She laughed, shouted like a maniac, and her minions would destroy whatever she couldn't. she'd been the kind of crazy person you stayed away from if you knew what was good for you. In retrospect, I should've known that stealing from her was a really bad idea.

The queen. She was scary, in a different way than Hallucca was. Hallucca was distant, a vague threat that would hurt people at random. The queen, she got personal. She wanted respect, and she abhorred failure. Anyone who opposed her would get her personal attention. Knowing what she could do. That she could do that to me if I angered her…

I'd almost been on the receiving end of that during my first talk with her, when she'd gotten angry for a few seconds. I really didn't want to do that. It was bad enough to watch her look at someone else that way.

All of that, however, was balanced out by Paige. O'Neill had said that the queen was Hallucca and the mayor combined, crazy all the time, but I was pretty sure that wasn't the case. It was hard to see, but it was there right now, while she was trying to watch tv, or back when we met, when she hugged me. She was nice, kind, almost. But also not entirely there in her mind.

It was like they were two different people, but also not. Paige showed herself to me because the queen seemed to like me, so they were still related in a way.

When the protectorate caught her… would they put her in the birdcage? Lock her up with the scariest people in the world… I couldn't say that the queen didn't deserve that, but Paige…

This was so frustrating… first the thing with Emma, now Paige, the queen… why couldn't things be simple again. All I wanted was to have my stuff and be able to tinker away, do my own thing without mom or her boyfriends ruining everything. It wasn't fair that I now had to deal with all this. Even if it wasn't my fault, if I couldn't do anything about it, I'd still feel guilty if Paige was sent to the birdcage and murdered there…

Could I do something about that? Would she not get sent there if she turned herself in? if she came without a fight? Could I talk to someone about it?

But why would anyone take me seriously if I said something. At best, I was a fourteen year old known for being 'a troublemaker'. At worst, I was a supervillain myself.

I'd had my hands in my hair from frustration, and when I looked up, I saw that Paige was looking at me. Paige, not Hallucca, not the queen. She looked… I wasn't sure. Frustrated? Was she frustrated that I was frustrated, or was there something else? She patted on the now even more luxurious couch besides her with her hand. "Come here child, it's going to be all right." She said in a soft, almost singing voice.

I walked over to her, putting my empty plate to the side. She was wrong. It wasn't going to be all right. She was going to get arrested and put in the birdcage just because she was a little crazy, O'Neill was going to hurt Emma, was probably hurting her right now. My mom was probably in the hospital, the house was destroyed, my scarf was gone, I'd hurt Horn far more then I'd wanted to, I still had small wounds all over my body, I was still getting sick, dad probably didn't want anything to do with me either…

I stumbled over my heels, falling over. Paige caught me, and I hid my face in her chest, holding on to her. It's not that I was crying, I didn't cry, everything was just a little…

After a few minutes, I didn't really know how long, Paige turned me around as someone entered the room, sitting me on the couch in front of her, her hands clasped together on my lap. It was O'Neill again, he probably had some more news that he wouldn't tell the queen.

A second, that was all it took before I heard the harsh tones of the queen above me.

"Tell me what happened!" She commanded.

The slick little bastard looked at her, overthinking every word before he said it. "Your majesty. The Protectorate has reactivated the water filtration system, presumably sabotaging it to poison your loyal subjects. Every second they are allowed to remain, more of your people will get hurt."

Wait, the Protectorate poisoning people with the water? From what I'd gathered, the entire problem was that the water was already poisoned. Something I'd caused by dropping those drugs in the lake. How did that make sense.

Unless… what if it didn't make sense. O'Neill lied, so what would he have to gain from making the queen believe the protectorate was poisoning people?

"Poison you say? A low blow, even for them. One that demands retribution. But it would be foolish to attack them while they are fortified. First, we must protect our loyal subjects." The queen replied.

"Your majesty. We cannot let them fortify further, you should strike right now."

Ahh, that was what was happening, he wanted the queen gone, so he could do something in the meantime.

Probably something involving hurting Emma. I couldn't let that happen. As long as the queen was nearby, O'Neill needed to work around her, instead of going straight ahead with whatever he was doing. "Majesty… please don't go." I said, in the most pleading tone I could, "your people need you here."

O'Neill looked at me, but his face was an unreadable mask, he was good at this stuff, probably a lawyer or something. Before the queen could reply to me, he objected. "We cannot delay your majesty, you must go now before more people get hurt."

"Can't people just drink bottled water?" I replied. Probably not, the bottled water had probably been drunk today already, but I needed to do something to keep the queen here.

"There's not enough, people just don't have all that much bottled water in their fridge. You must attack them your majesty, this cannot go unpunished!"

I could feel the queen's arms tense, she was thinking about something. Eventually, she answered. "General O'Neill, I seem to remember some of our men carrying around large amounts of bottled water. In times of emergency, we should share our bounty with the populace. See to it that the people know that the protectorate is trying to poison them, but that their queen will protect them." She stated.

I wasn't sure what her thinking process was. Did she believe O'Neill? Did she not want to attack them because she was scared, or because she wanted to protect her people? And what was this about O'Neill's people walking around with lots of water. He wasn't looking to happy that the queen had known about it, or that she'd told him to share.

One of her hands pointed at the doorway behind O'Neill, signalling that he could go. O'Neill walked backwards, and gave a quick "of course, your majesty", before turning around and leaving me alone with the queen, closing the door behind him.

"He's not cut out for this job" Paige told me, her left arm still wrapped around me in half a hug, the right playing with my hair. It was scary, being this close to her, to the queen, but it was also nice to have someone hold me like that, made it easier to pretend everything was going to be okay somehow.

It wasn't, but I could pretend.

"He's a good man, but he's been acting really distracted the last few days, like his mind's not on the task."

Yeah, you could say that. From what I'd heard, his mind was very much on something else than the queen's commands. I didn't know what, but there was something that had him distracted.

Paige kept on fiddling with my hair, grabbing a comb from somewhere, or maybe she just made it. She could make matter change, so she could probably also create it. I wondered what exactly her powers were. There didn't seem to be a single effect there, more of a wider theme. Control of her surroundings or something like that. A control that was then warped into something that made her slightly crazy, more so since the thing on the pier. So, instead of doing one thing in lots of different ways, she did lots of different things to the same effect. Like my hair, she'd somehow removed the dye from it, probably made it longer. But then why didn't she directly affect her opponents? Was it because she couldn't use her power on living things, but hair didn't count as being alive? I wondered how that'd work with skin cells, some of those were dead as well.

To make hair longer, probably wasn't even that hard with weird powers like her. She could just copy its structure and increase the length. Like somehow growing extra loops in the middle of a chain. It wouldn't have grown naturally, but it would still be the same substance. That was probably what she was doing right now, all the while brushing the tangles from my hair.

I wondered, her powers had changed. Whenever I'd seen her use them, she'd been intently focused, staring straight at whatever object she was affecting, Did that mean that, now that she was focussed on my hair and the back of my head, she wouldn't see what I was doing with my hands?

I summoned my sleeper in my right hand, furthest away from Paige's hug/hold. It wasn't really a gun. It emitted electromagnetic waves into the area it was aimed at, going right through everything. If I aimed it through my own body, at her, it would probably make both of us sleepy. I just needed to remain alert, while she'd be too focused on my hair to pay attention to the increase in sleepiness.

Add to that the wine I'd been giving her all day, and she'd probably fall asleep like a reality-warping baby.

After overthinking the situation for way too long, I aimed the sleeper at myself, and fired. It was soundless, lightless, designed for stealth. I wondered if this was going to work. Would I fall asleep first? Would someone come in and see the sleeper, unmasking me? I just didn't know.

*** Gadget ***

Eventually, I wasn't quite sure how long, probably after about fifteen minutes, Paige had fallen asleep. I wasn't sure if it had taken a long time because my sleeper didn't work very well, because it had to go through my own body, or because she'd been resisting it somehow. I slowly moved her hand, and stood up from the couch.

The first thing I noticed was how heavy my head was. The second thing was that I could no longer see any hair in my field of vision. I reached behind me.

She'd made it a bit longer before, but this…

My hair now stopped just before my butt. How was I going to hide this… just… hide it under my shirt?

Of course, I'd need a shirt first, and I'd already established for myself that there hadn't been any in the teachers lounge. Maybe there was something in the phys. Ed. Department, spare or found gym clothes. That might work, and be really sweaty. Luckily, I knew how to sneak around at school. Of course, lets see, there was a window in a nearby hallway that looked out on the roof of the building they used for shop class and stuff like that, from there, I"d be able to jump on the bleachers near the football field, make my way down and make my way into the offices there, that should be easy.

I looked through the keyhole, no-one was outside. Sneaking further, I saw the window I needed to open. It was locked, definitely not intended to be opened by students, but that hadn't stopped me before I'd gotten my powers, and it sure as hell didn't stand a chance against my lock-picker.

The next part was bad. I'd have to jump a two meter gap, something that was actually quite easy if you just went for it, since there was a small drop involved. But I'd have to take my shoes of, because I sure as hell couldn't make the jump in heels. Taking them off and jumping with them in my hands, I made it. Furthermore, I'd only sort of fallen over.

Which was a new problem, because now the pristinely white outfit's bottom half was dirty.

I'd deal with that later, hopefully.

While walking towards the place where I'd have to jump down to the bleachers, I started to look around where people where, getting a feel for the situation. It was empty, emptier than I'd expected. Were there just no people left? Was O'Neill too afraid of the queen, and did he send people out to distribute water? Or was he busy with something else, some operation he didn't want to tell anyone about.

There were two doors that were closely guarded by multiple people. The one closest to the teacher's lounge, which we'd come in through, and I could see another one near the cafeteria with multiple people in front of it. Was that because they were hungry? Or was it because they were guarding something, or someone?

What that meant, was that there was almost no-one near the locker rooms. I jumped down, from the roof to the top of the bleachers, hoping I'd judged the distances right. I probably had, I mean, I'd done this dozens of time before. From there, I made my way back inside, not even having to unlock the doors. Some people just couldn't get their heads around the idea of locking doors.

Once inside, I made my way to the lost and found bin for gym clothes, also known as the sweatstack. Also known as meaning I just made that up. It didn't actually stink of sweat that much, so they probably cleaned it every now and then. I went through it and tried to cobble together an outfit that could go over what I was wearing now. That meant that, in an emergency, I could probably just absorb whatever I was wearing and pretend I hadn't gone undercover at all.

*** Gadget ***

I was very happy with my helmet, not just because the little lights on the inside were amazing and I finally had good old artificial light again, but also because it was the only part of my new outfit that was NOT shit. I was wearing a discarded black sweater, and some guys' jeans.

But I had more important things to worry about than a fashion emergency. I made my way to the coaches office. A laptop, jackpot. Had it been a desktop, this wouldn't work, but this way, it would probably still have some charge. Starting it up, I came upon a password screen. That… shouldn't take too long.

*** Gadget ***

I checked the timer on my phone, ten minutes left, and one guard on the door I wanted to look behind. Not to mention the people who might be guarding what's inside. I was pretty sure that this was the place though. Had to be. I wasn't sure what to do if it wasn't. I grabbed my second sleeper, the one I'd used on Paige now too low on battery. Here went nothing.

It was working, It was actually working. Five seconds, and the guy started yawning, ten seconds, he was leaning against the wall. Ten more and he decided to sit down. Half a minute, and he was fast asleep.

Fuck I was awesome.

I walked to the door, taking care not to disturb the sleeping guard. When I came closer, I saw the ground beneath him. He'd been leaking some sort of substance, slick stuff, pouring out of his skin. One of his junks then.

I looked at the door before me. Only nine minutes left.

How should I go in… just kick the door open? Sneak in all stealthy like? The second seemed like the better idea. Too bad it didn't have a lock, then I'd be able to watch through the keyhole.

I pushed the door open slowly, sneaking into the room, someone with a nasty sense of humour had chosen to use the detention room for this.

She was tied to a chair in the middle of the room, with some sort of rubbery rope, and her torso was covered in frothy white stuff that could only be containment foam. It didn't seem to cover her fully, but it covered large parts of her right arm. She had a black eye, and several other bruises, as well as a nasty cut on her hand. Her lip was split, and a few of her fingers didn't seem to be turning right.

I… wasn't sure what I was planning on doing. I quickly looked at my phone. Bit more than seven minutes left.

I walked towards Emma, and tried to shake her awake.

"Emma, Emma? Are you alright?" I said, my voice modulator making me sound very deep, like a guy who smoked way too much for way too long, but was still really cool.

She woke up, and saw my chrome helmet right in front of her, accompanied by that sound. Needless to say, she tried to scream.

I quickly put a hand over her mouth. "Shh. I'm here to help you".

I had to admit, I didn't sound too convincing with that voice. More… menacing.

Fuck it, this was going all kinds of wrong anyway, Horn already knew who I was, telling Emma probably wouldn't lead to any more trouble than that would. I took of my helmet.

"Emma, relax, it's me."

She seemed to calm down, so I removed my hand from her mouth.

"Sely? What… how… please, you got to leave before he returns."

"It's all-right Emma, I'm here to rescue you. O'Neill isn't around right now, so let's set you free."

She looked confused at the revelation that I was a cape, but was willing to take that in stride for now. I summoned a pair of scissors meant for electrical wire, and started cutting through the ropes.

"Can you stand?" I asked, cutting as fast as I could. The timing here was kind of important.

"I… Maybe, but, it hurts…"

"I know Emma, I know it hurts, but you can't stay here." I looked on my phone, five minutes left.

"The guy outside is asleep, and there's no guards on the exit on the side of the football field."

"I… Sely, can't you come with me… I'm afraid. I… I got these powers and… I don't know if I can control them."

I looked at her. It didn't seem like she didn't have any control, she wasn't flashing with lightning or anything. Coming with her… it sounded like a great idea. I'd be away from all this, we could run away, get to safety…

But if I wasn't there when she woke up. if O'Neill did something to fuck her over, or the protectorate attacked and she decided to go all out. Paige needed me, whether I liked it or not. She'd been nice to me, I couldn't just leave her behind…

But how did I explain to Emma that the crazy queen everyone was afraid of was actually kind of nice? I guess I could just lie about it? That'd work.

"I need to complete my mission Emma, O'Neill, the guy in charge, he's planning something. I can't leave until I've stopped him."

She thought about it. Looked at me, then at herself.

"I… the guy, O'Neill, are you going to hurt him?"

I wasn't sure how to reply, but… "I'm going to try and put a stop to him, but you have to get out of here before my distraction goes off."

"I… Sely… can, can I help? I want to help you stop him."

She was calling my bluff without knowing it. Shit. What was I going to do

"Emma, you have to get to the Protectorate, you're not in any state to help me. Just get out of here and go for the water plant"

It didn't convince her. She stood up, her leg's working. "I can't… I can't run again. My brother, he… The stuff in the water got to him, he was really sick but, there was this gas and I couldn't… I gotta take down this guy Sely. Come on, let's go." She didn't sound as committed as her words implied. It was more like she was trying to talk herself into believing it.

I looked at my phone again, three minutes.

"I can do this. I can do this I can do this I CAN FUCKING DO THIS!" She shouted, waking up the guy sleeping on the other side of the door. He stood up, and looked at her, a look of fear in his eyes at seeing her unchained. He tried to say something, but Emma was within touch range. Rays of electricity shot out of her left arm, the one not covered in specks of foam, and shocked the man. He groaned, but it didn't seem to be enough to take him down.

The stuff leaking out of his body, of course. They'd set him on guard because it was at least partly an insulator. She could keep him stunned, but not take him down.

A wrench to the head, however, seemed to work perfectly fine. I hoped I didn't hit him too hard, but he probably didn't have any brain cells to lose anyway.

It seemed like we were going after O'Neill. The question was, where was he.

Maybe… I summoned his wallet. I'd grabbed it while we'd been walking to the queen together, but finding myself without pockets, I'd been forced to blueprint it. I'd forgotten all about it. Maybe it contained a clue.

Emma looked at what I was doing as I went through the wallet. Money, Credit-Cards, ticket stubs, the same secret society coins Horn had. Finally, I came upon what I needed. A membership card from the local golf club, a rather exclusive affair just north of town. I'd been forced to play caddy there once. It was out of the way, not the place people would look, and from the card, this guy was a high-ranking member.

As good a guess as any. I looked to Emma, and explained where we'd have to go.. "The golf club up north, that's my best guess for finding O'Neill."

She nodded.

Then, the noise started to the southwest of the school.

"Quick question Emma, can you drive?"


	21. Chapter 4,1

**Endgame: 4.1**

WHAT?" Emma replied.

"You don't need to shout Emma, I was just asking if you could drive."

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THIS NOISE!"

"Emma, the noise isn't that loud."

"WHERE THE HELL IS THAT NOISE COMING FROM!"

"The noise is my distraction Emma, we gotta go now!"

"ARE YOU SAYING THE NOISE IS DISTRACTING? OF COURSE THE NOISE IS DISTRACTING!"

Why the hell was Emma pretending my distractor was too loud. Sure, it carried pretty well, but I could still hear her perfectly fine, it was just a matter of filtering out the frequencies from the device through my earplugs and everything was okay.

This, of course, meant that I'd need to give her earplugs as well.

I am officially an idiot.

"Emma, take these!" I said, holding out a second pair of earplugs. They were connected to my helmet through a wireless signal, sending through only the sounds I wanted. Giving them to hear would probably mean that she'd hear exactly what I was hearing, as long as she was in range. That said, I put my helmet back on, setting the voice-changer to squeaky helium.

Emma put in the earplugs.

"OH GREAT THE NOISE JUST STOPPED WHY AM I SHOUTING?"

"…"

"OKAY I guess I can stop shouting now. Thanks for the earplugs Sely."

"Sure thing, but, ehm, can you call me Gadget with the helmet on?"

"I guess, but, I don't have a name yet. Like, a cape name."

"You can think of one later, now, as I was asking, can you drive?"

She looked at me with her mouth open, confused and offended somehow.

"Sely, I mean Gadget, we're both Fourteen, we're not allowed to drive, not even with adult supervision… It's illegal, you can't do that…"

Seriously? Seriously? It was illegal? That was what she was worried about? Not the fact that we were in the middle of an enemy base, that she just got tortured, that the entire city was in chaos, or hat we both had magic powers?

Some people…

"Emma... I don't even…" *** Horn ***  
Horn looked over the city, his real body high suspended several meters above the ground. There were very few lights. A few from torches or flashlights, and there was electricity at the water treatment plant, the hospital, and what seemed to be the local high-school. It was difficult to make out. The more he protected his face, the less he could see. His ears however, still worked, and picked up on the sound. He'd heard it before. His ears were better than most people's, but it was still rather loud. Probably louder than the last time, when the device had been stuck in the dirt. Most people in the town could hear it if they paid attention. Especially since everything else was silent.

He double-checked his armor, to make sure there were no traps left. His wounds were healing, but still hurt. He should've remembered that you just couldn't trust criminals, even small ones. The bitch had hurt him, but she hadn't succeeded in taking him down. He would just keep coming.

He dashed forward into the city, towards the noise. The ground flowing beneath him. The speed, the strength, it was intoxicating. His four-legged strides were long enough to jump cars, the asphalt breaking under his clawed 'feet'.

As he entered the town proper, he saw the devastation. Some caused by people with fake powers, other parts the result of his previous fight with Hallucca, and still some more caused by what had probably been looters, using the chaos to get a new television. People were pathetic.

A quick turn around the corner, far nimbler than before, saw him dashing towards a patrol of some sort. Behind him, he could hear the asphalt his feet had used for grip fly into a window. He was quickly approaching the patrol. One of them had a glowing face, and a fireball flew from his hand. Another, visible only because of the light from glow-face, shot with a gun. Both bounced off of him harmlessly. The fire-throwing fake was nothing in comparison to someone like Blauwster.

He kept going, not even bothering with the group. He felt one of his feet bump into something, but didn't know if it was a person or a dumpster. They were nothing before him now. Nothing could stop him. Not Hallucca, not that little blonde bitch, not even Blake with his stupid little regulations. *** Armsmaster***  
The water treatment plant was… interesting. At first Colin had worked on upgrading the original filtration system and restoring power. It was only after an hours work that Skip had found something. A place where, until quite recently, someone had operated chemical machinery not usually found in normal water treatment. That was when it had all become clear to him. The problem wasn't just the drugs in the lake, which had polluted the water supply. The problem was that the drugs didn't break down, at least not in the traditional way.

The machinery had been in the area of the treatment plant used for treating sewage, filtering something out of it. He'd called Myrddin over, who used his powers to isolate the compounds. The problem was, they'd expected the drug to be weaker here, at least partly used up inside the user. Instead, it was stronger, more potent. Even more troubling, someone had extracted this stronger variety using tinker-tech machinery. The question was who, and with whose machinery. Would they be facing a tinker? He'd been informed about a possible tinker/stranger in the town, but that didn't fit with finding this machine here.

He hated this, not knowing who his enemies were, or where they were hiding. If he had more information, he could prepare, set up counter-measures, make plans, do something. Right now, he could only worry. None of the people they'd taken down and arrested had known anything about where his daughter was, or Hallucca for that matter. She was good at this, better then you'd expect from a madman who'd nearly destroyed her own town for a quick grab at power. Rodeo had been using his power to lead her to them, but it just hadn't worked.

Was she immune to his abilities? Or was it something else? He double-checked the files on Rodeo's power. He was often flown in for big events where stampedes were a possibility, and there was quite a bit of information on it. One of the more useful parts was that his power worked on the subconscious, causing people to think they wanted to go somewhere, instead of forcing them to go there. It meant that there was little public backlash when he used his powers, they could be resisted, but only when someone really wanted to do something. He could move people somewhere, but he couldn't, split up people in close groups, like families.

He thought about it, how would he counter Rodeo if he was in Hallucca's position. His first thought was writing a program that would pre-determine his route, but that wouldn't exactly work, because he'd still have to enter his destination into the program, and that was what it affected. Something more subtle then. Think about where he wanted to go, and then go into the opposite direction. That might work, unless the power took that into account, making people still fall into that trap. He searched the database once more, yes, someone had tried that, and it hadn't worked.

What else… The power affected the mind, so you couldn't trick yourself.

It hit him, of course. If the power worked on your subconscious thoughts, he'd just have to ask someone else where they wanted to go. They wouldn't be aware of the reverse psychology trick, so they'd answer truthfully. Then, you'd simply go the other way afterwards.

If that worked, then actively sending the enemy away from them would attract them instead. Countering reverse psychology with reverse psychology.

He put a finishing touch on his new filtration system, the flow of water into the device powering its own filtration. The only sound was the gentle flow of water, anything else was minimized, noise was inefficiency. It was time to find Rodeo, and ask him to turn around his power, with some luck, that'd attract Hallucca, and with that, he'd be able to rescue Sely.

When he entered the room where the others had holed up to rest, his sensors picked up something. A high-pitched noise, his triangulation system placing it to the west, in the middle of the city, precise to about fifty metres at this range, more if it was inside.

"Time to go everyone, something's happening." He said, waking up Skip. Assault and Mouse Protector looked up from their card-game as well, they seemed to be having fun. He'd have to inform Battery about that, it wouldn't be good for the team dynamic if Assault broke up with her, probably. *** Paige ***  
The queen woke up with a jolt, unaware that she had fallen asleep. Some fool had disturbed her with a hellish noise; it was like her eardrums were bleeding. Quickly, she covered her ears with her hands, and leveraged her power to create a long-term solution to the noise. It would be harder to communicate with these earplugs in, but she didn't need to talk to punish the scoundrel that had woken her up.

Her ears protected, she looked around. Something was missing. She thought for a second. Had someone stolen something from her? Then she remembered. Loyal little Sely, her cup-bearer, someone had stolen her away. This could not stand. No-one defied her, and no-one hurt her subjects.

Horn, it was probably Horn, that uncouth savage had thwarted her plans for long enough, and now she'd kidnapped her servant as well.

She looked at the little kitchenette, a stainless steel countertop. That would do quite nicely. She walked towards it, and it started growing, folding, thickening, changing shape. When she touched it, she wrapped it around her, covering herself in the now sturdy steel. It was… tricky. It was easier to reform the joints whenever she moved than it was to figure out a proper design on the fly.

She started for the door, and walked towards the source of the noise. The few people standing on guard were busy covering their ears, hoping the noise would end. The sound was letting down slowly, but that didn't mean all that much given its initial strength.

When she left the building, she saw the source of the sound. Up high, near the roof of a building. She conjured up some light in its vicinity. It was a drone. It was slowly flying around the building, as if observing it. Strapped to its side was a little box that was creating the noise. She applied her power, trying to take it down.

It resisted her a little. It reminded her of the invaders, the one whose armor resisted her power, and the one who created things that were harder to affect. She paid more attention, checking which parts of her power worked on it, and which didn't. Matter generation and depletion was more difficult, while her telekinesis still worked. Good. She broke the sound generator, and twisted the drone in such a way that it crashed down. Maybe it contained some hints as to who was opposing her.

She took out her earplugs, and noted that there was still noise. This time it was something that was approaching her general location. It sounded big, heavy, and fast. *** Emma ***  
Nothing in the last two days had made any sense. Emma's parents had been out of town on a business trip. Her brother, a nineteen year old "college student" had stayed home to take care of her. The idea being that he could cook meals rather than get take-out food or ramen every day. But, Emma could cope, it would only be a few more days.

Except then the power had gone out, the house turning dark. Her brother, Jeffrey, had said it wasn't a big deal, that they could get out some candles or something. It was scary though, the dark all around, only candlelight around to help her.

Jeffrey had heated up some soup from a can for dinner, and they'd spend the evening reading. Reading was stupid, but the phone lines were down, and she couldn't call any of her friends.

Later that night, Jeffrey had decided to take a bath, hoping that the warm water was still working.

That was when stuff had really started going wrong. Jeffrey had started shouting, and I'd ran up to help him, but something was wrong. I heard him throwing up, but there was some weird thick gas flowing through the small slits around the door. Worse, it was eating away at the wood.

She could see it, the thick clouds slowly moving towards her, but she wanted to help Jeffrey.

But she couldn't, because the gas was in the way.

Eventually, she heard Jeffrey scream something. He sounded like he was in a great amount of pain.

"Run Emma, get away from me, get the PRT. Something's really wrong with me." *** Emma ***  
She couldn't find the PRT office, but she did see several destroyed buildings. It was dark, she could hear people crying out, screaming. She had to get away from this, but she couldn't go home. She just had to find the heroes, they would solve everything, that was what heroes did…

"Hghhh GHeeelp," She heard someone say. She looked around at the source of the noise. It was an old woman, about fifty years old. Her eyes were glowing, and she was walking, no, stumbling, towards her, one hand reaching forward. Her body was moving strangely, twisting where it shouldn't twist. Emma couldn't see much of it in the darkness, but it didn't sound right. She ran again, further into the darkness of the city. Trying to get away from it all.

The darkness was moving in around her, she was hugging a street-light, but it didn't work, it wasn't on. Everything was dark and wrong and didn't make any sense. Why wasn't the power working. When were her parents coming home? She just wanted to go home but…

The darkness kept getting closer, like it was moving around her, she couldn't even make out her own hands anymore.

She saw nothing

She saw everything

She forgot everything

She saw light.

She was still clutching the street-light, but it was working now. A small electric light shining, light, at long last.

She looked at her hands, sparks were flying between her and the lamp-post. *** Emma ***  
Sely was really wacky, everyone at school knew that. She was a troublemaker. But never in a malicious way. She didn't bully other students. It's just that the teachers didn't like it when she snuck onto the roof again. She hadn't really belonged to any clique, but everyone knew her, or at least knew of her, especially after she'd hijacked the announcement system to read out a few of the notes two teachers were passing around between each other.

That didn't mean, however, that anyone would have expected that she was a cape. If she was a cape at least. The goofy helmet certainly seemed to point that way, and the earplugs were very high quality, but hitting someone in the head with a hammer wasn't exactly a show of parahuman ability.

And now she wanted to drive a car. Which was illegal, because neither of them had a driver's license. which meant they couldn't, or they'd be supervillains, that was what parahumans who broke the law were.

Emma wasn't a supervillain. Sure, she'd left her brother behind, but he'd told her to. She'd hurt people, but those people had been bad people, and heroes were allowed to beat up bad people.

So no, they weren't going to drive around, because they weren't villains. She grabbed Sely's hand, and pulled her along. She had a plan. There were mountain bikes stored at school, second-hand ones used by the cycling club, they could borrow those. Borrowing without asking was all right in an emergency.

Together, they ran towards the shed were they were stored. They passed another guard, covering his ears. A quick zap took him down before he could do anything. A quick dash across open ground, and they'd reached their destination.

She tried the door, locked. An iron lock, she could work with that. Emma pushed Sely, Gadget, away, and pulled forth her full power. Lightning bolts arced across her body, and she send them towards the lock. They lashed through the air, and she could feel the insides of the metal lock. Moving the electricity inside the lock, she moved the metal as well, removing it from the door. She'd done it, she'd opened a door without anyone nearby getting hurt, or anything electrical exploding.

And then she heard the noise, the new noise. Something was approaching, big, fast, strong. She could feel it whenever it touched the ground. She turned around, and saw Sely running back into the school. On the other side, she saw something big. Even in the darkness, she could see the spikes running along its exterior. It was white, but there was a red streak across one side. It looked utterly terrifying. It didn't have a head, the angles on its legs looked unnatural, and it kept leaping towards the school. Towards Sely.

Was this it? Her first big fight, her all alone against this thing? This… she was too afraid to say it, but… Endbringer?

It seemed to be ignoring her, going straight for the school, the door Sely had entered through. An angry scream came from within the thing. It sounded more like a beast than a man. 


	22. Chapter 4,2

**Gadget 4.2**

Before I could grab my lockpicker, Emma pushed me away from the door, then, she started activating her power.

At first, I thought that she just electrified everything around her, but that wasn't correct. Not exactly. The sparks didn't dance around her, but through her. Some in the zipper of her jacket, sporadically through the fabric in places, but most clear was the electricity under her skin. Neurons, maybe? Those had electricity didn't they? Or maybe it was something else.

When her hand moved towards the door, it lashed out, moving between her and the metal handle.

Which was very interesting, but I also heard something else. Something big.

Only one thing that could be. I looked in the direction it was coming from, I couldn't see much, but yeah, only one thing was that big and spiky. And that thing did not like me.

"Emma, we have to run, NOW."

Emma…. Wasn't replying, too caught up in her power to listen to me. I thought about pulling her along, but when I moved closer, sparks started moving closer to me, and my helmet's HUD started getting interference. I could only hope that she'd notice in time, or that Horn wouldn't attack her.

Me, I ran for the school, maybe he wouldn't be able to find me once inside. I dashed for the closest entrance, the one we'd just left, and ran though. The thumping only increased.

I ran further, almost slipping several times with my socks on the smooth hallway floor, more sliding through the corners than running. This was bad, this was really bad. That howl… Horn was angry.

I should've expected that. I should've thought of that before I made him stab himself with his own thorns, and now, he'd apparently removed my traps, and he was coming for me.

That was the second time this week that I made my enemies more powerful.

I thought Horn crashing into the ground was loud. But behind me, I heard bricks fall and wood splinter. Horn just hit the school.

I turned another corner, only to see a set of guards. Two of them, one keeping a healthy distance from the other.

"Fly you fools". I shouted, a pipsqueaky voice coming out. Great, just when I needed people to take me seriously.

One of them, the one that had been looking at his partner in fear, started running. The other… the other decided he would block my path. He stood in the middle of the small hallway, believing that stopping me would be a better idea than to escape the crumbling building.

I dashed for him, intermittently feinting to the left or to the right, but I couldn't trick him that way. Nor could I turn around, dust was flowing into the hallway from behind me.

Seeing only one way through, I dropped down, sliding over the floor, hoping to go in between the man's legs. It worked. Sort of.

When I was almost through, he grasped at my helmet, shortly touching it. immediately, my HUD went dark, and the glass became hard to see through. But, I managed to get to the other side, scramble to my feet, and run on.

Two hallways further, I noticed that whatever the man had done to my helmet, it was spreading. I ripped it off, immediately noticing the amount of dust in the building. Horn was just tearing it down, trying to look for me, or Hallucca I guessed. The helmet… the front of it was covered in some weird glass-like crystal, that was spreading around. I dropped it, hoping it wouldn't do any permanent harm. Looking around, I suddenly noticed that I was getting wet, the sprinkler system? I could only hope the drugs hadn't been in this either. Time to get out of here.

I ran out of the front entrance without further trouble, the building now abandoned. Running on, I looked back. Horn had decided to just leap on top of the building, rather than going through or around it.

Worse, I'm pretty sure he just saw me.

*** Paige ***

The thumping noise was moving towards the school-building. The building she'd just been inside of. An assassination attempt? Surely no-one would be so foolish as to underestimate her.

Then, a howl pierced through the rumbling, she turned around, looking for the source. She didn't see anything yet. She decided to go back to her men, and left the broken drone behind her. That mystery could wait. Something was attacking her people.

As she came closer, she saw the source. A large, spiked, thing, was standing on top of the school building. It's feet sank through the roof, but that didn't seem to bother it. Instead, it looked like it was thriving in the destruction.

She wondered, who would be foolish enough to send such a beast after her.

She used her power on the swathes of dust rising from the school, turning it luminescent. The form became easier to make out. White horns twisted into an inhuman form. Covered in dust, mud, and she thought she also saw some blood.

Horn had returned.

She looked herself over, the armour she'd covered herself with. She made it grow, and changed it's materials, heavier, sturdier; she needed something capable of stopping Horn, not an easy task, given how big he was right now.

Usually, the bigger he was, the slower he was. His horns added mass at the same ratio as strength, combined with the growths obstructing each other, and he'd get slower, not faster. But now. He was big, but more than that, he was intricate.

He was also angry, angry and, for lack of better words, enthusiastic. Paige steeled herself, she would defend her kingdom. She couldn't let it fall to a savage like Horn.

Horn jumped down from his perch on top of the crumbling building, but he wasn't coming for her. He landed just in front of the building, and was slowly walking towards someone.

It took a second, because she was wearing something else now, but Paige recognized her. Sely. So Horn had been the one who had stolen the girl away from her duties. The girl was running in fear, her beautiful golden hair flowing behind her. Horn was walking after her, spikes around his feet digging into the concrete below him to add traction.

She laughed, Horn was strong, sure. But he still had a fatal flaw. Her royal blood was what gave her dominion over the living, while her power gave her dominion over the non-living . Hair, fingernails, and Horn's growths, they fell into that second category. She walked forward, and saw Sely look at her. She ran past her. Treason? No, she probably just didn't recognize her with the armour. Annoying.

She moved closer, and looked at Horn, at his Horns. Started melting moving parts together, adding where there was no room, taking away where it was fragile. 

*** Horn ***

Horn jumped, landing just behind the little criminal. Her hair had gotten longer, but he could smell her, the sweat she'd had on her hadn't washed off, and he had a very good nose. He moved forward, feeling the crumbling of concrete beneath his feet. It felt wonderful. He was strong now, stronger than he'd ever been before. Nothing could stop him now.

Another step, just behind the girl. It wasn't fair, he was just toying with her now. She couldn't escape him. She would face justice for what she did.

He laughed. Finally, he was strong enough. He could protect the people now. Criminals, corrupt politicians, those didn't stand a chance. Jack, Rodeo, he'd been wrong. You didn't stop criminals by working together, by following guidelines and doing paperwork. Sure, sometimes it was useful to have others around. But right now? Horn was the strongest thing around. He was going to clean up the city, and nobody would be able to stop him.

Another step, and something felt off. Hallucca, her power. It had defeated him before, but not today. He'd done more than just take away the traps the girl had left. He started growing his horns, slowly, but surely. Breathing life, growth, into his horns. Slowly, enough to counteract Hallucca's effect, but not enough to destroy the delicate balance of growths that kept his current form working.

He laughed, and looked around. There, she'd covered herself in armour, but it wouldn't help her. He marched forward, utterly invincible. What little damage she could do, he regrew, where she added too much on top of the horn, he severed it. It had taken some time, teaching himself how to do it, and it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough.

He charged Hallucca, switching targets. Dust flew up from the ground, obscuring his vision and breathing, but it was nothing in comparison to what Leviathan had done. He stepped further forward, and swung at her.

She couldn't get away in time, and was launched to the side, the metal shell encasing her skidding along the ground.

*** Emma ***

The beast had ignored her, and ran after Sely, when it reached the school, it jumped on top. It was big, too big. She couldn't hurt that thing, her electricity didn't really leave her body, just jumping around between metal bits nearby. She could feel those metal bits, move them with her mind, but that couldn't do anything against a creature like the thing currently tearing its way through the school.

But she couldn't just let it go after Sely. She'd been rescued by her, she was a hero, and now Emma was going to save her in return.

She ran after the beast. Not straight after it, that… that was too scary. Maybe… maybe a bit to the side. This wasn't just a normal hoodlum she could take down with a few self-defence lessons.

Sneaking around the side of the school, hiding behind cars where she could, she eventually saw the beast jump off, jumping down the building at the entrance. Emma started running, she had to keep up, and it couldn't see her right now. After a quick dash, she saw the thing again, white gnarled growths surrounding it, slowly shivering under some sort of powered assault. It dashed forwards, towards a metal figure, slamming the figure to the side. It skidded along the ground towards her. She ran towards it once it stopped, the beast was looking around again, searching for something. Hadn't it seen where its prey had landed, or was it looking for new victims?

Emma looked at the figure before her. It wasn't armour in the traditional sense, it was just metal wrapped around a person, leaving holes at the eyes and mouth. She looked at the woman, but couldn't recognize her. She seemed hurt.

She could help her, at least. Get her out of this metal tomb. Emma unleashed her power, the sparks arcing from her body towards the metal, entering it, filling it with electrical potential. Some of it wanted to go further, into the woman, but she reined it in as best as she could. Then, once she'd filled the metal with her electricity, she moved it, breaking it apart and shifting it away from its victim. Where it didn't touch the skin anymore, Emma channelled more power into it. It was good metal, strong, sturdy, conductive. Slowly, while the woman was coming to again, she floated the metal in front of her, connected to her body with arcs of electricity. A spear, to pierce the heart of the beast.

The woman stood up, an intense look on her face, scary, deranged. The woman ran forwards, back into the fight. Beneath, the ground deformed, launching her forward faster with every step.

She heard a shout, one that she recognized, Sely. She had to hurry now.

*** Gadget ***

Horn was playing with me. He was too fast, too strong. I couldn't do a thing. For just a second, I thought he left me alone, going after a metal figure instead. Probably the queen on second thought. I didn't want her to be hurt, but… it was better than him killing me. But then, after swatting her away, he came back after me.

I ran, east, as fast as I could carry myself, which wasn't very fast. Every time Horn jumped, he landed right behind me, the ground shifting behind my feet.

"Run little traitor. Run" he said, in a low, rumbling voice. The increased physical strength probably changed the tone of his voice somewhat.

Then, he struck at my legs. Not hard, like when he struck Paige, but just enough to swipe them out from under me. I fell, stumbling, the strike had ripped of most of the clothes around my legs, leaving only the lacy white, now covered in red dots. My feet too, were bleeding from the mad run without shoes. I couldn't feel it, but I could see the red. Horn was laughing as I stood up, running again. Calling me a liar, a traitor. It didn't make sense. It wasn't fair. He wasn't even trying to arrest me, asking me to surrender, he was just toying with me.

Why would anyone do such a thing. He was strong. He was a hero. Was he so fucking pathetic that he needed to hunt people down for sport? Whenever someone talked to him, he always said he just wanted to protect people.

But then… not everyone painted him as a hero. He was big, scary, I wasn't quite sure what happened, but he'd been kicked out of the Protectorate for being scary.

Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I jumped over the next sweep, staying on my legs.

"You think you can dodge me. You little bitch? You think I'm stupid? I'm not stupid, I'm stronger than you." He rambled. The next time, he hit at chest height, and knocked me to the ground again. I heard something crack when he hit me. When I tried to stand up, my left arm was dangling uselessly. I screamed again, for the third or fourth time. I didn't have anything to stop him, I couldn't do anything.

*** Horn ***

Hallucca was down, out of the fight for now. She wouldn't survive that blow, not even in her tiny tin shell. Horn looked at the other criminal, the one that was personal. She'd thought he was stupid, tried to trick him. But that didn't matter, he just kept coming. He always kept coming. Didn't matter if the people feared him, he wouldn't stop what he was doing, catching criminals.

Sure, he could admit he wasn't very intelligent. He'd never done well in school. But you didn't need to be smart to do the right thing, to be a hero. You just needed to fight the good fight.

It didn't matter, that people called him a worthless hero, what mattered was that he kept the streets clean. He'd fought Leviathan, he had friends in countries these people had never been to.

He jumped after the girl, the girl that thought she could rob people in his city. The girl that thought she could betray him.

He swiped at her feet, the little idiot fell over. That would show her. He'd seen her, inspecting his posters. All he'd wanted was for some help tracking down Hallucca's stash of drugs, but she'd obviously just taken that as inspiration for her own heist, taking the drugs for herself. You couldn't trust criminals like that. She fell, stumbling, but got back up again. She was running again, one jump, and he was right behind her.

Another swipe, that would teach her. This time, the cheeky little traitor jumped his attack. Laughable. He berated her, for her behaviour, and then struck again, aiming higher this time. The girl fell, he felt her bones break. Still, she stood up again. Filthy tenacious little bugger.

It was about time to really take her down, he'd need to go back and make sure Hallucca was fully defeated too. He leaped after her, and struck for a third time, this time upwards. A slow hit, aimed to impart momentum this time, not squish her body immediately. She was launched forwards in an arc.

*** Emma ***

She tried following the woman, bringing her gigantic spear along, but the woman was too fast. Still, not as fast as the beast, not with the head-start it had. She looked at her spear, it was big, heavy. Not in the traditional way, but still. Lifting it upwards, some weight was on her feet. Part of that was taken care of by small arcs of lightning, grounding themselves, pushing up a bit, but not enough.

Could she do the same thing going forwards? Throw something backwards, and go faster that way. Emma looked at the side of the road, parked cars.

She could stand on one of them, push another away, and go faster that way. But… she was pretty sure that would be like stealing the car. Taking people's property. That wasn't what heroes did, heroes returned stolen items. She looked further, until she saw a bicycle someone had locked to their fence. Could she take that?

It'd still be illegal, of course. You couldn't just take what you wanted like that. But, maybe it was okay if you could save someone's life? Still, she couldn't just…

Fine, she'd do it, she'd steal a bike to save Sely. She'd probably end up in the birdcage for being a supervillain eventually, but it was worth it to repay her debt. Father always said that a good person repaid his debts, and that probably also counted for women. Probably. Dad had never been sexist in any way, but you never knew.

She set her spear down for a second, and started working on the bike lock, wrenching it open with her power. Then, after taking a seat, (it was a boy bike, so it was harder than usual, it was also a bicycle for someone significantly taller than her.), she lifted up her spear again. This time, her electricity moved through it easier, making it quicker to respond, she didn't need to take a few seconds to fill it up anymore. Holding out one hand to keep her power focussed on her spear, she started cycling, quickly seeing the woman again, who was she? An out of town heroine? Here to save the day? She vaguely recognized the woman's face, probably from the news or something, so that made sense. Still, she couldn't help Sely or the woman if she wasn't anywhere near them, so she biked on, trying not to fall over with the massive spear floating just above and to the side of her, small electrical sparks covering her body, the bike, and the spear, and flowing between them. 

*** Gadget ***

Again, I'd gotten up, clutching my broken arm. I had to run, but I couldn't see, I couldn't feel. It was so dark, I was cold and bleeding. I didn't want this. I just wanted to get some stuff to tinker with, I never asked for this. Horn was going to kill me. He was going to kill me, and then he was going to kill Emma, and he was going to kill my mom, and he was going to kill Paige.

Or worse, Paige would kill him, and then someone would arrest her, send her to the birdcage. She'd spend her remaining days surrounded by monsters who would hurt her all day long.

When had I changed like that, that when my death was immininnimenent, and my body was hurting all over, I'd think of someone else getting hurt…

One last time, Horn swiped at me, a whole body upper-cut, he pushed me up and away. I couldn't see where, didn't even try. I flew, and I fell, it couldn't have been much more than a second or two, but it felt like an eternity,

I fell, but I didn't hit the hard ground. Instead, the ground gave way. Was this how it ended? Everything giving way. I heard someone say something, a high voice, it reminded me of my voice-changer. The ground reverted, pushing me up again. I flew again, but slower, not as high. I couldn't quite see, my hair was in the way.

This time, I didn't hit the ground at all. Someone caught me, and hugged me to him. It felt like he wearing metal, but it wasn't cold. I opened my eyes, but all I could see through my watery eyes was a blue-white smudge.

"It's alright sweety, I'm here now."


	23. Chapter 4,3

**Gadget 4.3**

*** Skip ***

The city sprawled beneath her, broken, empty. People were staying inside, or had fled town early on in the chaos.

If you walked through the street, you wouldn't see the extent of the chaos. It was, generally speaking, too spread out. A thousand cuts instead of a single strike.

Her helmet protected her from most of the wind, but she could still feel the air rushing past her skin. She looked around, spotting the locations of the adult heroes. They'd spread out, taking different approaches to flank and surround the enemy.

Hallucca, the mayor. She'd talked to her a few times, or, rather, Rodeo had talked to her, and she'd been nearby. Skip still couldn't really believe that that woman had been a supervillain.

Supervillains were supposed to be ugly, mean, have big scary supervillain bases under volcanoes, and be allergic to sunlight. Not win elections. She probably didn't even monologue!

Then, she saw something hit a big sprawling building. Probably the high-school, she'd have to go there in a couple of years. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was big.

Skip activated her earpiece. "Sumting big just jumped on a building, west of Armsmaster." She said. Her statement immediately acknowledged by the adults.

She was falling again. She looked down. She'd had a tutor explain about height, speed, and time. Difficult stuff. Hard math, but she sort of understood the basics. The higher she went, the faster she'd go once near the ground. But, by aiming her power to the side, she could trade height for distance. She braced herself, this jump would take some aim.

She landed on the steel roof of an empty car. The roof bent downwards, giving almost no resistance, the frame of the car, too, squished beneath her feet. As she hit the ground, she started moving, getting herself into position. She sank into the ground, the earth around her bending downwards. Quickly at first, but then slower. She made a small jump backwards, the deepest point of her crater moving. Not in the centre of the circle, but still right beneath her feet. She hoped her aim was right. It was hard with big jumps.

Skip had two favourite moments. The top of a big jump, when everything was silent, and the bottom. It was like the highest point in a rollercoaster, things would only get faster, and quickly at that.

Her tutor had explained once that she was, in addition to her moving-hitting-shaking stuff, also a breaking person. She'd taken her to an army base, where they trained pilots. There was a big rotating machine there. All the airplane soldiers wore special suits when going in, but she hadn't. The machine was basically a chair that spun really fast. It'd been amazing fun, especially as the machine went faster and faster. The only hard part was actively holding back her power.

This, the moment after a big landing, reminded her of that. She saw that she'd gone as deep as the crater would go, and stopped her power. At a crazy speed, she launched up in the air again. Wind whistling past her. It was loud, but it was a good sound.

Skip looked down again, this time, she saw something illuminating the figure on the high-school. It was big, bigger then she'd guessed. She also recognized it.

Why was Horn destroying the building.

"The big thing, I think it's Horn. He's real big…"

She looked further, trying to scout. She couldn't see much, everything was dark. When she was falling down again, Horn jumped down.

This time, when she landed, she waited a bit longer to deactivate her power, reducing her speed a bit. She could still jump over buildings, but now she could actually aim.

Horn was chasing someone, a couple of streets over. She could see his massive body rampaging through. It was scary. Why would he do such a thing?

Sure, he was a bit weird every now and then, but that was just who he was. Even when he did something scary, he didn't really mean it like that.

On the third jump, she saw what he was doing. He was chasing someone with long blonde hair. Skip was pretty sure Hallucca didn't have long blonde hair that long.

As she saw Horn swipe at her, she saw Armsy running down the street, towards them.

She jumped, aiming for the ground ahead of the girl. Hopefully, she'd be able to catch her.

Horn struck the girl, and Skip launched herself forwards, hitting the ground at the same time the girl did. She aimed, she would go up, the girl would go towards Armsy.

She landed in front of Horn, and brought herself to a stop. Horn seemed to slow down. Wherever he was in that big gnarly growth, he'd seen her.

"Horn… what's wrong?" she asked.

It looked at her, even though she couldn't see the things eyes. It was covered in dust, and had a streak of what seemed to be blood on it. The horns looked weird, not smooth like they normally were, but wrong, like there was stuff growing on the surface.

It grumbled something. "Move."

"Horn, calm down… what are you."

Horn kept walking, moving around her.

"Horn… stop it. Please… You're not yourself." Skip moved herself, placing her in his path again.

"Move, Aside." He grumbled again. He sounded angry. In pain.

"Horn…" she pleaded, but he did not stop.

One of his feet hit her. Not hard, not intentional, he just didn't care anymore. Skip was thrown backwards, bouncing over the asphalt like a pebble on water.

*** Armsmaster ***

He had her, she was safe now.

Armsmaster looked down at the child in his arms. Her hair was longer, much longer, hair extensions? Then there was the outfit. Sweaty gym clothes, covering a white dress. There was blood, dirt, dust. Her left arm was dangling down, broken by the beast in front of them. Horn, from what Skip was saying.

He wasn't sure what to do about that, she'd saved his daughter. Social protocol demanded that he buy her a beer. But, social protocol and basic knowledge of biology also told him that that would be a very bad idea. He'd have to think of something else.

Sely was crying, her eyes red with tears when they weren't hiding in his armour. Had she noticed it was her father come to rescue her? Did it even matter?

He hit her in the neck with a small needle. A combination painkiller and antibiotic, her sobbing started to slow, she'd be all right. Slowly, he brought her down, laying her on the ground before him, when suddenly, Skip yelled out. Horn was actually running forward, through the girl.

He looked at Horn, the leg that had hit the young ward was deformed, which meant her power had done its work. She'd be perfectly fine, as long as she didn't land in a fire or anything similar.

His mind raced through his options. What did he know about his enemies, and what did he have to counter him.

Horn was a brute, grew ivory-like material from his body. The more of the material, the more strength it granted his body. At the same time, the durability of the horns also seemed to increase with the amount generated at a time. The question then, was whether that durability was purely his horns, or if it also affected his real body. If it didn't, he could be beaten by attacks that circumvented the horns. If it did increase his durability…

Horn was almost there. Armsmaster dashed forward, the power-armour in his legs kicked in, launching him forward. If the records were correct, this was the first time Horn was in this form. It was new to him, and Armsmaster could use that.

Just before reaching him, Armsmaster dropped down, skidding between the beasts legs. It didn't even notice, too intent on attacking his daughter. Then, once under the torso of the beast, he launched his grappling hook attachment at one of its front legs, reeling it in at just the right moment.

Horn stumbled and fell over, not quite aware of what had happened. Armsmaster activated his earpiece with a set of eye movements. "Skip, can you get to the girl?"

She replied, although she sounded like she was crying. "Yes… but… why is Horn so angry?"

Shit… why did people keep asking him this kind of stuff. Luckily, Rodeo came to the rescue. "He's not angry at you Skip, just angry at the world. You didn't do anything wrong."

While the local was comforting the girl, Colin changed his channel. "Em Pee, can you?"

"Already on it Beardsy." She replied.

He returned his focus to the battle. Horn had turned around, his attention fully on the man with the halberd.

"Well then, manbeast, now that I have your attention, let's dance."

It leaped forward, planning to land on him and let its weight to the job. A bad move. Detaching his grappling hook from the leg, Armsmaster jumped back, and activated the plasma blade, striking at its front with the heated edge.

Where it hit, the growths were split cleanly in two. Good, that would work. However, within seconds, it started re-growing.

It swiped its paw, arm, claw, straight into the halberd. It was cut off cleanly, but the severed parts flew straight on. He'd have to watch out for that, too clean a cut could spell his doom. His opponent probably couldn't launch parts on his own, probably, so it wouldn't do to help him get a ranged attack.

Colin decided to go on the defensive, getting a feel for his enemies' movement. The biology was non-standard, hardly biology to speak of, but there was a pattern to its design. It was like looking at another tinker's work. At the start, it didn't make sense, but when you looked closer, patterns started appearing.

A deep layer of horns moving in the shoulder, and half a second later, he would start swiping his left claw again, that twitch in its leg meant that he was getting ready for a leap.

Colin had often been criticized for not being able to read body language. It was true, sort of. He had a hard time with faces, emotions, that sort of stuff. This right here? Reading his opponent? He was good at it. Perhaps it was his rather clinical look on things that did it. Action, reaction. Cause and Effect. These weren't just scientific principles, they were universal ones. Move this way, then that way. There was a pattern to all of it, and once you understood that pattern, you understood your opponent. Once you understood your opponent, you had already defeated him.

The man before him? This Horn? Armsmaster didn't know how he thought, why he had attacked Sely, why he hurt his former ally, an eleven year old girl. Why he shouted what he was shouting. He didn't need to. He knew how it moved, better than it did itself.

Once, he'd taken a hit, the claw leaving a small gouge in his chestplate.

Twice, he had to dive away at the last second to dodge a hit, and mud now caked Armsmaster's left shoulder.

But that had been thirty seconds ago. Right now, Armsmaster knew his opponent, and he danced. Every strike it made, he sidestepped before it even started its swing. Every time it pounced, Colin was away before it even left the ground.

He enjoyed it, in a perverse way. He knew he shouldn't. People had gotten hurt, houses were ruined, and his own daughter would need medical treatment. It was a sad thing that heroes like him were needed. But right now, in this moment, he could almost sing. There was pleasure in utterly out-thinking an enemy, the adrenaline coursing through his veins, mind, body and technology working in perfect synchronicity.

Only one thing stopped the fight from being perfect. Try as he might, he simply couldn't do any lasting damage.

*** Myrddin ***

Colin had a daughter, he still couldn't quite believe it. He still couldn't quite believe that the boy had actually hooked up with someone, even though he'd been there to see it.

What a mission that had been, three weeks on a cruise-ship, trying to prevent the kidnapping of the president's daughter, all the while staying undercover as civilians. He'd gone along as chaperone, supervising the first real Protectorate mission for Mouse Protector, Chevalier, and Armsmaster. It'd gone pretty well, until Mouse got her paws on a cocktail bar. Their identities, and the mission with it, had almost been exposed when Armsmaster had somehow managed to woo the girl that had seen them and get her to swear secrecy.

Colin, being the socially observant person he was, hadn't even known he was flirting with the girl. He just wanted to show her his newest gadget, a spear that could quickly increase in length. Didn't really help when he stated that his spear was much longer than the six inches Annabelle was implying.

Not to mention the attachment that launched white containment foam…

But, knowing the entire story, he just couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

Before him stood Mouse Protector, who had just used her teleportation spell. That much he bought. Perfectly possible.

Holding her left hand was a girl that couldn't be older than twelve, wearing a blue costume with orange lines zigzagging over it. A powerful enchantment protected her, allowing her to bounce on concrete, steel, incoming bullets, pretty much anything really, like it was a trampoline. He could buy that too, magic powers came in all shapes and forms.

The problem was the girl she was carrying in her right arm. Was her hair ridiculously long when it had been quite short on a picture taken only a few months ago, sure, but that could be explained away. What couldn't be explained away, was her nose, her ears, and the shape of her eyes.

The universe was playing a trick on him, a test of faith perhaps. It had done this before, but never to quite such an extreme degree.

The last time had also involved Armsmaster, and had come in the form of a letter from marketing about two years ago.

They'd announced they were discontinuing Myrddin's Magical unMentionables, in order to focus on their newest, most successful line of underwear.

He strengthened his resolve. Everything being an illusion or the universe testing his faith was par for the course, and no reason to stop doing his job.

"Do you have everything you need to perform first aid, Mouse Protector?"

"Of course Mr Potter, you go on ahead to the fight, I'll take care of these girls and teepee back to you once I'm ready!"

"Good, any advice for what kind of opposition to expect?"

"It's big, it's gnarly, and Halbeard is kicking its ass, not sure where the queen bee is though."

"Got it, see you in a few minutes then."

Myrddin started walking away from them, better to have some space if he wanted to use his mobility spells, and the time for stealth was over. He grasped his staff, and started drawing, one sign for partial envelopment of the self, lowering density, and therefore weight. Another below him, a portal to the elemental plane of air, which would rush out behind him and propel him forwards.

Behind him, just before taking off he heard the young ward ask something of Mouse Protector.

"Miss Mouse… what happened to his lightning bolt scar?"

Inwardly, Myrddin groaned. The spirit of the universe was testing him indeed.

Then, he soared forwards. It wasn't flight, not really, he hadn't mastered a spell for that yet, but it was a good imitation, long, far jumps in which he propelled himself forward, the winds roaring behind him.

After a minute, he reached the site of the battle. The beast-man, Horn, was shouting as if he was possessed. Every statement made less sense than the previous. He had lost it, a berserker rage. One that made him attacked unarmed children. Maybe they could restrain it, if not; it'd have to be put down.

Armsmaster was handling it, dodging every strike before it started, his plasma blade cutting deep gouges into the creature. But it wasn't enough; it was regenerating, slowly but steadily. They would need to strike at it's true form, but how? A fireball perhaps, hot air could penetrate between the growths where steel could not reach. He observed the battlefield, and his eyes were drawn to a nearby road. A woman was running towards the site of the battle, deforming the ground beneath her with every step.

He recognized her, Hallucca, the target. A potent witch, capable of warping reality to her whims. A rather attractive one too. The last time they'd fought, she'd taken off his robe and wizard hat with her power. He wondered, would she strike the same way again, necessitating a repeat performance? He moved himself forward, ready to meet the witch head on.

*** Paige ***

Finally, she'd reached them. Horn was fighting one of the invaders, a skilled knight in blue armour with silver trimming, his halberd glowing with power. The master of arms of the Protectorate.

Two birds with one stone. She readied herself, the new plan to take down Horn clearly in her mind. It would slaughter the invader as well. She gazed, not at them, but at the air in front of them.

Oxygen, Nitrogen, water vapour, dust, ionized molecules coming from the halberd, and there it was, CO2, she thought back to the trick she performed on her handmaiden's hair, doubling the pattern.

Then, she was blasted back, skidding over the ground; she warped it up under her, and landed on her feet. A dozen metres in front of her he stood, the wizard of Chicago, his staff still glowing, a symbol drawn in the air with it.

"Stand aside invader, this beast is hunting my loyal subjects, it demands punishment."

The man looked at her, his staff ready at hand. She could see him smile beneath the hood. An attractive smile. Perhaps she would take him as her concubine one his army had been defeated.

"Armsmaster has everything under control, Miss Bourbon, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you in."

Take her in… The scoundrel still thought he had legitimate authority, in her kingdom, nonetheless. Very well then, her plan would work on him the same way it would work on Horn.

She gazed again, right in front of the man's luscious lip, a full white beard covering his jawline.

"I take it you're not surrendering then." The wizard said, a hint of disappointment in his voice.

When she was blown back again, she saw the flaw in her plan. Making the air unbreathable didn't mean much if her opponent could conjure extradimensional gale winds at a whim.

Very well then, she gazed at his clothes, twisting and shrinking them.

It worked, sort of, his clothes were definitely hurting him. That is, until the moment he banished them with a wave of his staff. A staff she couldn't affect correctly. He stood before her, grey chest-hair covering a magnificent set of muscles, the only thing he was wearing was a rather large pair of woolly underpants, blue with yellow stars on it. The man smiled, and drew another sigil, another airblast, he was still taking the non-lethal route. This time, however, the air was scorching hot.

However, she'd been prepared this time, her feet encased in concrete keeping her standing up. As the man's attack increased in intensity, breathing became more difficult, but she kept growing the matter around her feet. Then, she remembered something. Hair was, to her at least, not alive.

She gazed at the man's magnificent beard, growing it, twisting it into a thick, tight braid, and twisting it around his neck. He reacted, but it was almost too late, he dropped his staff while pulling at his beard, trying to buy himself some air.

*** Emma ***

Ever since she'd gotten her powers, she'd mentally prepared herself. She knew people with powers got into fights. It was on the news all the time. She even knew people with powers fought endbringers. Died fighting endbringers. For that, too, she'd been prepared.

Naked old wizards that worked out and got strangled by their own beards? What could possibly have prepared her for that.

The shock had been enough to send her falling of the bicycle, and she'd skinned her knee in the process. It was nothing compared to the bruises she already had, but it still hurt. When she looked at the battle again, she looked past the naked old man, at the endbringer.

It was fighting Armsmaster, or rather, had been fighting Armsmaster. It had probably gotten frustrated, and went hunting for easier targets, right now, that meant it was running towards her, or, hopefully, the naked wizard and the woman that had stuck herself to the ground. Problem was, neither of them seemed to have noticed.

Emma shouted. "Endbringer incoming!"

When the two looked at her, she pointed past them, to the beast. When they looked at it, running at them, the naked old man's beard stopped strangling him. He managed to grab his staff, and started drawing something in the air. The woman, meanwhile, was looking at the endbringer, trying to her power on it. For a second, it's wicked-looking outer layer seemed to be melting, bubbling and boiling, but something happened to stop that.

The old man was done with his sigil, and wind blew out of a hole in reality in front of him. He was thrown backwards by his own power. Emma got hit too, by a directed blast, and was thrown backwards as well, out of the beasts path. Her spear however, still hovered where she left it. The spark of electricity between her and the object had been weakened by the wind-blast, but, apparently, it could go much further then she'd thought once established.

She looked back at the endbringer, and noticed the woman was still in its path. The windblast had hit her, but her legs had been locked to the pavement, keeping her in place. She was panicking, trying to tear the rock from her legs, but it was too late.

The endbringer screamed something. She didn't understand, endbringers didn't talk, did they? Nonetheless, she was able to puzzle together what it was saying. "I'm better than you, the people will be free of your chains."

Emma flinched, closing her eyes. She didn't want to see this.

She heard a bloodcurdling scream from the woman, and an impact, the sound of shattering bones.


	24. Chapter 4,4

**Gadget 4.4**  
Horn rushed towards her, his bulk impervious to her powers again. She tried increasing the amount of CO2 again, but he moved too fast for it to affect her.

Very well then, she would simply have to jump out of the way. She readied herself to budge the road below her upwards. But it wouldn't give.

Of course. She'd locked herself in place. The bearded man was sending out another wave of air, knocking the strange girl with the floating spear and bicycle away. It didn't work on her.

Horn came closer, she could see his filthy face, teeth rotting from drug abuse, sweat and dirt covering his body. Was this it? Would she really be defeated by this peasant? This beast?

Yes, it did indeed seem like she was going to lose this. Horn kept on charging her, intent on rubbing in her face that he killed her most loyal subject. Sely was gone, not even her body remained.

She screamed, moments before the beast hit her. Whatever passed for its head came for her, it was like time slowed down in her last moments. She saw the horns moving closer and closer, saw inside of a horn, saw the middle of the tangle of horns, saw the man inside, bending himself around like a madman, controlling the unnatural body, and then, saw the open air again. Before her, one of the invaders, Armsmaster, was running after Horn.

She turned around, and saw Horn brought to a standstill. White splinters flying through the air. The force pushed Horn's front half upwards. He stood upright, balancing on just his back legs. The hit had been a hard one, but the front of his body was already regrowing. This wasn't going to work. Eventually, the invading Protectorate capes would tire out, while Horn would keep regenerating like the cockroach he was.

How, then, would she take him down. A hole beneath it? A gas attack? She looked at the girl, electricity arcing around her body. Would she be able to hit Horn? Given a path?

She'd need water then, it would seep around the beasts horns, connecting everything to the body inside.

Armsmaster had struck the back leg, making Horn fall down again. The man who'd shattered it's front, some peasant whose name she was not aware of, was talking to the girl now.

She mentally went through her impressive array of abilities. Once, they'd all been the same in her mind, just barely catalogued by effect, called upon through imagination. Now, she could call upon them through their mechanisms. For now, she would call forth, add to what was already there. Only instead, add to what was not there yet. Or at least, just barely not there. Some water was always present.

She opened the gates, and water flowed through it. Something was wrong, however. The water wasn't interacting with anything, and there was far too much of it. The gates, microscopic areas where matter entered through, were tearing, growing, spilling out much more than they should. Spider web cracks crawled through the air. Something was really wrong, had her power betrayed her? Had one of the invaders done something to her?

The cracks kept spreading, slowly growing towards her, she tried to run, but her feet were still contained on the ground. She looked around, but no-one else seemed to be noticing what was happening, they were fighting Horn.

The cracks reached her, and started splitting her skin. Moving reality in different ways, she screamed, again, her body was wrong. The world was wrong.

*** Emma ***

"It's all right little miss, it's not an endbringer, just a crazy cape."

Emma opened her eyes again, trying to see through the tears. The man in front of her had a red visor and bodysuit. Some kind of hero, although she didn't recognize him. Would he be offended by that?

He was squatting, closer to her than strictly safe, but for now, her lightning wasn't arcing towards him. Behind him, the beast was fighting with Armsmaster again, with the naked man giving back-up. There were a lot of fragments lying on the ground, but the thing seemed to be intact, regenerating after every hit.

The man in front of her held out his hand. "Come on then Sparky, let's get you back on your feet."

Emma took his hand in hers. A few short arcs of electricity tried moving towards the man, but they couldn't find anything interesting on his suit. She wondered what it was made of, rubber maybe. It was easier to control now that most of her electricity seemed to be going to the spear that was still floating in the air.

"My name isn't Sparky mister." She replied politely. It wouldn't do to have him think she was called something she wasn't.

The man looked at her, at her clothes. "I'm guessing you haven't picked anything yet."

Emma wondered, picking a name? Wasn't that a parent's job? She sure hadn't picked Emma for herself, her parents had done that.

Then it hit her, the man was talking about cape names, of course, that made sense.

She nodded to the man, who replied by putting a hand around her shoulder. With his other hand, he gestured towards the beast-thing that wasn't an endbringer.

"Very well then, Miss no-name McSparkyPants. I've been thinking. This guy, this Horn fellow, as you can see, he regenerates. Now, my boss, the guy with the relatively unimpressive beard over there, mister Armsmaster, has been cutting away at the thing. That doesn't work, but if you pay some attention, you can see there's a lot of movement beneath the outer layer."

Emma listened, paying too much attention to reply to the sparkypants comment. She nodded. "Yeah, I see." It looked strange, inhuman, but there was a sort of elegance to it, like her father's pocket watch.

"Now, my suggestion here, is that we take that spear of yours, and launch it right between the legs. It'll be like putting a stick in the wheel of a bicycle. You think you can do that?"

Emma looked at her target. It was trying to swat at Armsmaster again, and failing to hit him.

She nodded. She could do this, she could be a hero.

Mentally, she retreated inwards, towards her power. The spear was buzzing with it, almost alive. Filled with her electrical charge. She took what held it upwards, the part of her power she'd put on cruise control, and made it move forwards. It moved, faster than before. The electricity inside it responding to her thoughts, moving forwards. And as the electrical charge moved, so too did the metal that contained it.

It was fast, hard to aim, especially since it was still tethered to her body with yellow-blue electrical arcs.

The man beside her held a hand to his ear, "Spear incoming boss" he said, talking over an earpiece.

Armsmaster looked their way, and manoeuvred himself, and with that, the beast. The spear penetrated it from the side, and Emma could feel it crushing the horns. Then, she stopped it before it went through. The beast tried to move, and she could feel the crush inside of it, like a machine crushing itself against the strange metal.

It couldn't move half it's body, and the other half started thrashing around wildly. Mentally, Emma cheered herself on. She had defeated a villain, without having to hurt anyone.

Suddenly, the naked man cried out. "Backfire incoming."

She saw him leap to the side. Armsmaster jumped away as well. The man beside her grabbed her, and pushed her to the floor. All the while, lightning still arced between her and the beast, holding the spear in place.

Then, the world shattered. Water came into existence, at the location where the woman had been, and exploded outwards. In the middle of it, Emma thought she could see a body.

Before she could react, the water had reached the beast, soaking it. She couldn't really see it, but she could feel it with her power, which arced through its entire structure. It, for lack of better words, short-circuited, flowing out of the spear into the beast, as well as the man inside.

She stopped her power, all the while feeling how it was flowing through the man, through his skin, his muscles, his heart.

She wasn't fast enough. When the water had reached her, she already knew it was too late. Before her eyes, she saw the beast crumbling. Within it, at the core, the man she'd just killed.

She was evil, wrong, a murderess.

What would her parents say… She'd abandoned her brother, gotten captured by crazy people, and now she'd murdered someone.

As she started crying, the man besides her hugged her, burying her face against him.

*** Chevalier ***

Chevalier hadn't joined the fight. It wasn't that he was afraid of his opponents, it was that he trusted his allies. And while they were fighting the big fight, he could find out what was happening.

That had led him to the enemy base, now in tatters. Here and there, people were collecting what they could. Looters, criminals trying to salvage what they could from a botched operation. They weren't what he was there for. It was time for big picture stuff.

The people they'd found here, the ones who had taken the drugs. They'd been powered, yet not. His sight, his secondary vision, it didn't work on them, there was nothing to see.

Except the one time, one of Hallucca's minions that had been at the water treatment plant. It had been almost invisible, undefined, but there had been something there. A potential trigger then? Brought to the forefront by the drugs he had been taking? Or was it something else? He had been stronger than the others, a lieutenant.

He ran on, trying to figure out what was happening. Most of the people seemed leaderless, afraid. Running away from him on sight.

He turned a corner, and saw what he had been looking for, a man loading something into a car, bags. Probably filled with money, but maybe with something else entirely. Better than that, the same ghostly aura.

The man turned, and stared back. He looked strange, He was wearing an expensive, well-tailored suit, but he was wavy somehow, like he was out of focus. Chevalier blinked, and the man had moved into the car, trying to get it to start.

Strange. Up until now, all the artificial powers they'd encountered had been physical, a mutation or some such granting the ability.

He launched himself forwards, extending his cannon-blade, slicing the tires of the car. He'd have to get to the bottom of this.

Having taken down the car, his vision started wavering again, the man was running, outside of the car once again.

He pondered his options. At range, his arsenal was limited. He wasn't a mover, and this man had at least some form of teleportation. He could shoot the man, but that would almost certainly end in a red puddle on the pavement.

His options limited, he chose to take the secure path. He walked to the car, and looked inside it. A suitcase, filled with several things. There was money, quite a lot of it, but not enough to be a full stash. There were also a few bags filled with white powder. Not enough to have filled the suitcase. The man had made off with some of them. He took a closer look at the bags. To his normal sight, they were plain. To his second sight, they hummed with power, not enough to attract attention, but there was certainly something there.

He wondered about the man he'd just let escape. Had he been the mastermind behind this operation? Or had he just been a puppet, ordered around by someone behind the scenes?

*** Gadget ***

Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep.

The sound was annoying. I was finally able to sleep, and now the alarm was going. I moved my arm to put it on snooze, I could always wake up later.

The pain was what really woke me up. I wondered why it hurt so much to move my left arm, when it came back to me. It'd been broken.

My mind was still fuzzy on the details, and it definitely didn't hurt as much as it should've but I also noticed one of my legs wasn't moving well.

My right arm was another story, something warm was holding it in place.

Giving up on getting some more rest, I opened my eyes. The first thing I thought was that this wasn't my room. The second thing I thought was that my room had been melted down. The third thing I thought was what had happened to Paige. Something had attacked her.

I looked around, noticing that I was in a hospital, all kinds of wonderfully advanced machines attached to me. Although, not as many as I'd liked. Then I looked to the side of my bed.

Dad was sitting there, holding my arm in his and reading something on a tablet with the other. He looked at me, noticing that I was awake, and gave my hand a small squeeze. He looked like he was about to start saying something when he stopped himself halfway through. After a few seconds, he started talking.

"Hey sweety."

"Hi dad."

He sat that for a bit, while I was starting to wake up a bit more. My head still felt fuzzy, probably painkillers. After a minute or so, the only sound in the room being the repetitive beeps, he said something again.

"I head what you did for that girl, Emma. That was very brave of you."

I wondered, how much did he know? What had Emma told him? How had he gotten here? I thought back, tried to remember what had happened. I'd been running from horn, I'd fallen into some sort of squishy pavement, and someone in armour had caught me. I vaguely remembered a woman too, and I teleported somewhere, but after that my mind went blank.

"Your mother… She'll heal, but she has a long recovery ahead of her. Hallucca… Something she did restricted blood flow to her brain for a bit, and quite a few bones were broken…"

That… that was sort of a shock. I'd known that the queen had gotten angry at her, but hearing what she'd done…

Was it strange that it didn't really change my opinion of Paige? I'd known she was crazy, that she'd destroyed my home. But that had been the queen, not her. Right?

"Dad… is Paige…" I wanted to ask something, but speaking took a lot out of me. I was more tired than I thought.

"She'd in the ICU honey, being kept under anaesthesia. She can't hurt you anymore."

It… It kind of hurt that dad thought that Paige had tried to hurt me… It was Horn that was the scary one. I gathered my energy, getting ready to give a full reply.

"Dad… She's… She's crazy…"

"I know Sely, but that psychopath can't hurt you right now."

"No dad… I mean… She's really crazy… She doesn't really know what she'd doing…"

I stopped, gathering energy. Dad grabbed a glass of water from the nightstand and handed it to me, waiting until drank a bit.

The water helped. A lot.

"She... She really thought she was a queen… She can't help it dad, but… She was nice, beneath the crazy. Is… is she going to the birdcage for being crazy?"

Dad looked at me, and smiled, one of his hands brushing through my hair.

"I know some people rather high up in the PRT and Protectorate… I'll see what I can do."

I smiled back, "Thank you dad."

We stayed there for a while, just me, dad, the beeping machine… After a few minutes, my eyes became heavy again, and I started to fall asleep. Things were going to be all right. 

*** Assault ***

Ethan was happy, giddy even. The mission had been a success. The villain captured. Another villain taken down. The village saved. He still couldn't quite believe that the people here called Westlake a city. It really wasn't, at barely ten thousand people, but they were rather obsessed about it.

But that wasn't what Ethan was happy about. It wasn't even that they were probably going to have an awesome new ward joining them in Brockton Bay, if talks with her parents were successful.

No, the reason that he was happy, was that Colin had told him to fly home on his own.

And that meant only one thing.

He entered the plane, sat in the pilot's seat, and suddenly remembered that he had absolutely no idea how to turn on a plane outside of simulators.

Then, a voice greeted him over the intercom.

"Hello Assault, I'm dragon, and I'll be flying you home."

Of course… Of course Armsmaster had gotten dragon to fly him home. And all he'd ever wanted was to fly a fighter plane.

And marry his Puppy, but that plan was already in the works.

"Hello Dragon, nice of you to co-pilot for me." he quipped.

The display turned on, and showed a digital face, smiling vaguely. Ethan waited as she started up the plane, and went for take-off.

Then, she asked a question.

"So, Assault, tell me about this girl I've heard about. Colin's daughter."


	25. Arc 1, Epilogue

**Arc 1 – Epilogue**

 **Welcome to the Parahumans Online Message Boards**

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You have 2 infractions. You were last banned on November 27, 2009. 

**Topic: Hallucca**

 **In: Boards ► People ► America ► West ► Wyoming ► Villains**

 **Jigsaw** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)

Posted on June 20, 2007:

Well then, here's the thread for Halluca, the sole active supervillain in the town of Westlake. She is generally rated as a shaker, and is personally responsible for large amounts of property damage.

People who see her are advised to vacate the area without giving her an excuse to attack, and inform the local PRT office.

 **(Showing Page 17 of 17)**

 **► PRT Westlake** (PRT Official)

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Yes I can officially confirm that she is in custody, Further details will be supplied later tonight during a press release, attended by me and Armsmaster, who has been so gracious as to stay in town for a while to help get the electricity and water supply working again.

 **► Halbeardbutt**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Armsmaster's staying in town? awsome, he's the best.

I just hope he doesn't help repairing the school, I heard it got totally trashed.

 **► StandingBullseye**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

So Westlake goes dark, literally, for about three days, villains and vigilantes run amok, and we don't get any answers? what the hell happened and why were there no reinforcements the moment shit went down? Seriously the PRT is so useless sometimes.

 **► Rodeo** (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 17, 2010:

StandingBullseye

Don't know why there was no response the first day. wasn't the first time the big offices have left us out to hang. We've been asking for assistance in dealing with Hallucca for years, but somehow they won't get it through their head that crowd-control isn't really something I can use to take down a lethally dangerous madwoman.

Many props to Armsmaster, Myrddin, Assault, Chevalier and Mouse Protector for finally coming to help.

 **► FireGuitar** (Unverified Cape) (Temp-banned)

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Rodeo

Dude, this is, like, the fiftieth fucking time you asked for help complaining that Hallucca was destroying the town. Boy who cried Hallucca much?

 **► Rodeo** (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 17, 2010:

FireGuitar

City, it's the CITY of Westlake.

 **► FireGuitar** (Unverified Cape) (Temp-banned)

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Oh shut it with your fucking inferiority complex

 **[User given a temporary ban for this post: No personal attacks people]**

 **► WhiteWizard**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

So, to get back on-topic, Anyone know what's going to happen to her now that she's arrested? Birdcage? Or are they just going to let her escape for no reason and go through all this again?

Also, there's this guy saying she was the mayor over in the Westlake General thread, any confirmation on that? 

**End of Page.** **1** **,** **2** **,** **3** **...** **15** **,** **16** **, 17**

 **Topic: WTF is happening in Westlake**

 **In: Boards ► Events ► America**

 **Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know)

Posted on March 16, 2010:

So appearantly, about two days ago, the town of Westlake was hit by something during a capefight between two power went out, and the biggest building in town melted down, as you can see HERE.

Making this even more interesting is that, as covered on .org, some sort of powergranting trump drug has been spread through the town.

Cape's involved are Hallucca and Horn. Both are generally small-time, although Horn got some press after participating in an Endbringer battle last year

If anyone more familiar with the local cape scene can help, that'd be nice

Edit: according to one of my sources, several heavy-hitting Protectorate capes are heading there right now.

Edit2: Chevalier, Myrrddin, Mouse Protector, Armsmaster and Assault are confirmed as having dealt with the situation

 **(Showing Page 17 of 17)**

 **► HalbeardButt**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Everyone always says Horn is scary af, but I met the guy and he seemed really nice, was the only one trying to actually do something about Hallucca.

 **► StarWitcher**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Yellow126

Dude, if anything supports the 'capes are magic' theory then it's people like Myrddin and Hallucca, even if just some capes are magic.

 **► Yellow126**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

StarWitcher

How is pocket dimension any different from, say, throwing fireballs? Just because it seems like "magic or someshizzle" is the best explanation doesn't mean it is, we probably just don't know what specific thing Hallucca can do.

 **► AngelMoon**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Wait, so if the Protectorate in Westlake only has a very subtle master cape, and a ten-year old that's not going to be anywhere near a fight, how are they supposed to work?

 **► BioWeed** (Veteran Member) (Verified Ent)

Replied on March 17, 2010:

AngelMoon

They don't, that's the entire point. Thing is, Hallucca was relatively content as long as her dealers were left alone.

 **► StarWitcher**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Yellow126

Of course, so the whole trance stat thing, the appearantly granting people powers thing. It's all just "Powers"? Note that you haven't actually explained why 'powers' is a better explanation than 'magic'.

 **► EndlessLoop**

Replied on March 17, 2010:

Wait, so, did Hallucca kill Horn, or was it something else? and was she always strong enough to take over a town?

StarWitcher and Yellow126

Back on topic please, for the source of the trump-drugs, see the wiki article on RoidMaster. 

**End of Page.** **1** **,** **2** **,** **3** **...** **15** **,** **16** **, 17**

**Private message from xX_BloodRaven_Xx:**

 **Halbeardbutt:** Saw you online, you make it out okay?

 **xX_BloodRaven_Xx:** Yeah, mom loaded us in the car the moment our apartment started melting. I'm at an uncle's out in the boonies right now. Fucking sucks here, no computer and shitty internet, I can barely browse PHO. life is suffering I guess.

 **Halbeardbutt:** Dad told mom to leave town too, even before that happened. Said something about the mayor being Hallucca, Can you believe it? I'd love to see her fight it out with Horn, it's about time we had some real cape action in town.

 **xX_BloodRaven_Xx:** You still in contact with your dad? Does he know what happened? Tinfoils on the net are going crazy.

 **Halbeardbutt:** Not sure, he called us this morning, saying something about reinforcements coming in. Can't find much else though, although there is this article.

 **xX_BloodRaven_Xx:** Holy shit, Scarf-girl got kidnapped? What'd she do this time? throw eggs at Hallucca's windows or something?

 **Halbeardbutt:** Probably something like that yeah, you remember that thing with the cat? I still don't understand how the teachers didn't know it was her.

 **xX_BloodRaven_Xx:** Shit yeah that was awesome, there's still blue pawprints on some of those walls. She's sneaky though I'm pretty sure she's the one responsible for that one time I had blue hair.

 **Halbeardbutt:** Well Gary, maybe you should pay some attention the next time you go all "my hair isn't black enough".

Anyway, you know what happened to the other people in class?

 **xX_BloodRaven_Xx:** Not sure, bout half of them made it out I think,

 **xX_BloodRaven_Xx *New Message*:** Saw that the forums that everything was over, I'm staying here another day while my dad goes with some guys to check it out, see you online tomorrow I hope? 

Percy Johnson looked through the pages again. This sucked, this sucked so hard. Dad was probably drinking beers with Armsmaster right now while he was stuck in the middle of nowhere because it "wasn't safe". He just couldn't believe it, the greatest tinker in the world was in his hometown and he couldn't be there.

Maybe dad would get him a signed T-shirt or something…

*** Colin ***

Colin was pacing around in the small office. His daughter asleep, he now had the time to deal with the other situation.

Generally speaking, wards were clustered into larger teams. Cases like Skip, a single ward in a town with a near negligible protectorate presence, were rare. In her case, this was because of her status as an orphan, and the fact that her remaining family members, grandparents, were in the local nursing home. Perhaps if she was a bit older, and wanted to, she would move to a larger team where she could get more support, but given her age, the relatively peaceful situation here was a far better option for her.

Emma, however, was a different story. She was older, fourteen, a classmate of Sely's even, and although she was feeling guilty over Horn's death, she seemed to like the idea of joining a bigger wards team.

Of course, given that the girl was fourteen, he'd need to discuss things with her parents. Her older brother, who would probably make a full recovery from the tinker-tech drug, said his parents would probably be okay with it, but Colin wasn't so sure.

In preparation for their arrival, he'd done a few background checks. He couldn't find much on Emma or her brother, besides one case of underage drinking for the boy. Her mother had grown up in the area, studied international relations at a variety of prestigious universities, and eventually settled down as a house-wife. Her father's record, however, simply said REDACTED, even when provided with his clearance level.

Then, when he had been sitting at Sely's bedside this morning, Emma had come in and told him that her parents would be coming home in the afternoon via plane.

Something quite interesting, because civilian flights weren't allowed to land on the local airfield right now, which was reserved for emergency services.

He had unmasked himself to the girl during her debriefing. She'd told him how she'd gotten her powers, and used them to defend herself and fend of patrols, until she was captured. Then, Sely had come out of nowhere and rescued her, hitting the guard in the head with a wrench, after which they'd apparently made plans to go after the real master-mind, a man by the name of O'Neill. Sely had taken the man's wallet, but it had been lost in the following chaos. While heading out to go find him, they'd been attacked by an angry horn, after which he could finish the story himself.

He sat down at in the chair, hearing another plane arrive in the distance. He'd requisitioned an office in the airfield under his civilian name, with the cover story that he was a PRT official. Not entirely true, but not entirely false either. The moment their plane landed, the girls parents, Mister and Misses Smith, would be asked to come and meet with him here.

*** Agent Smith ***

Daniel Smith was a man that could be perfectly described in a single word: American. He had a beautiful wife, two lovely children, a house with a white picket fence, a rather expensive BBQ grill, several guns and rifles, and what could best be described as a license to kill.

Thus, when, in the middle of a mission in the middle east, disguised as a pleasure trip with his wife, he had heard that their small town had been taken over by criminals, he finished his mission as fast as possible, and returned home, commandeering a plane small enough to return directly to the small airfield near Westlake.

His wife had been able to contact his son, and they'd been informed as to their arrival.

Everything was apparently fine with their children, although their son had ended up in the hospital for a while, some sort of strange poison.

Thus, he was quite surprised at the man waiting for them when they exited the military plane they'd commandeered.

"Mr and Mrs Smith, I presume?" The man said. He looked stressed out, tired, someone who had been thrown into a situation far out of his league. Given the little PRT logo on his breast-pocket, he could believe that.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Mister?"

"Blake Johnson, PRT."

Of course, the PRT, a group of people simply obsessed with the parahuman population, so reliant upon their superpowered allies they didn't even use guns. If you asked Daniel, a quick and simple assassination was a far better solution than sending out masked idiots to fight them on their terms.

"And your business with us is?"

"Ah, yes, I'm here to tell you that officer Wallis would like to talk to you?"

Wallis, not a name he remembered, someone from out of town? Typical PRT, trying to steamroll other agencies by demanding the attention of their agents.

"And why does officer Wallis want to talk to me?"

The man looked around, glancing at the other people in the area. He seemed annoyed to be asked questions, he was probably used to people simply doing what he wanted them to do.

He looked at Daniel and his wife again.

"Officer Wallis would like to talk to the both of you, in private."

The man seemed to be talking in some sort of code, but not one that Daniel recognized, how annoying, the incompetence of these people. He was about to say this, when his wife elbowed him in the side, and continued the conversation herself.

"Of course officer Johnson, where can we meet officer Wallis?"

Did his wife know something he didn't? Sure, the woman could charm anyone, from captains of industry to suspected terrorist leader to African dictators, but when would she have read the PRT code-books?

As they entered the makeshift office, consisting of a desk with a highly advanced laptop placed on it, Daniel observed this "Officer Wallis".

The man was tall, he had brown haid, shortly cropped, and a well-trimmed beard. His eyes were intense, observant, purposeful. His stance was good, stable, but it seemed to fit a slightly heavier man. Daniel couldn't quite place it, he wasn't ex-military, but there was little of the fighting styles used by the PRT trainers. Self-learned then? For all the man's muscle, he seemed unsure of himself. Unarmed, or less well-armed than he was used to. Probably not expecting physical trouble, or he would've brought a weapon. Social trouble then, the man wasn't looking forward to this conversation.

Was this about the affair in Munich? Had his actions there interfered in some Protectorate operation? Inter-agency communication wasn't always very effective.

"Good afternoon, Mr and Mrs Smith I presume?"

Before Daniel could take the initiative, his wife replied

"Yes, officer Wallis. Do you need to see an ID or?"

The man nodded to that, and before he could do anything, Lana showed him her passport. The man looked through it, checked something on his laptop, and returned it.

"I'm afraid I have some rather, complicated, news about Emma." The man said.

Would that be his play? Threaten his daughter? He moved his hands, allowing easy access to his gun, but Lana nudged his hand away from it.

"I…Presume she hasn't gotten herself into legal trouble?"

"The opposite, actually, I can truthfully say that she was instrumental in solving the… ehm… situation, here in Westlake."

Lana beamed, pride filling her face, and Daniel wondered what he had missed.

Situation, privacy, legal trouble and it's opposite, the PRT.

That couldn't be… not his little girl….

If Emma was a parahuman…

Daniel felt incompetent, useless. He'd always told himself that what he did, he did to keep his children safe. If his daughter was a parahuman. She was going to go up against other parahumans. Brag as he might, he knew, deep down, that he was simply no match for most of them.

His wife was continuing the conversation. Asking about what happened, what Emma's powers were, what the wards were like, how quickly they could move to a place with a well-equipped team where they could probably guide her with her powers. What schools were like in Brockton Bay, if the university there would accept their son.

Daniel just tried to find a solution to his problem, until he realized something.

The man they'd met at the plane, Blake Johnson, him he recognized, he'd been the local PRT guy for years. This man in front of them… Why Brockton Bay specifically. According to the news, it had been Myrddin, Chevalier, Armsmaster, Mouse Protector and Assault coming in. Going by what he knew from the pictures that had been in the article, Myrddin and Mouse Protector were a strict no, Assault didn't have a beard, and Chevalier wasn't stationed in Brockton Bay.

It also explained his stance, he was self-taught because he was simply above the martial arts normal people used.

His mind raced, what did he know about Armsmaster. A tinker, a master of technology, one of the more famous ones, unlike Dragon, who had massive suits filled to the brim with military and tinkertech weaponry, Armsmaster got up close and personal, a master of close-quarters combat. Not very charismatic in an extended conversation though, going by how the conversation was going. Not that it was in any way unpleasant, but he recognized his wife subtly steering the discussion, keeping everything copacetic.

God he loved that woman.

Eventually, their meeting was over, his wife having discussed everything she deemed important. While they were getting ready to go to the hospital, Daniel reached a decision, he told his wife to go on ahead, and turned to the man.

He grabbed his ID, the piece of plastic that identified him as a highest-level black-ops CIA operative, and showed it.

"Armsmaster, if there is ever anything I can do to help keep Emma safe, tell me."

The man looked at the card, identifying some features, noting the, highly classified, sequence in the serial numbers that identified him as what he was, and nodded. Good, his little girl would be safe in this man's hands.

*** The Queen ***

The queen looked around her room, gold and marble adorning every piece of furniture, A massive canopy bed covered in silk alone. This was a good place. A refuge, away from the hubbub of the peasantry. She relaxed, and looked at her project. A diamond lens of a rather peculiar shape, almost completely without imperfections. She smiled, the project had been interesting, and her minister of engineering had informed her that these would supply energy to her people at greatly reduced cost. A win-win situation, she could leisurely enjoy experimenting with her power, without harming the people of her realm through inaction or inattentiveness.

A knock on the door. Annoying, she had stated that she did not wish to be disturbed. She opened the door with her mind. Someone walked in, wearing a uniform of some sort.

"Good morning Miss Bourbon, how are you feeling today?"

The queen thought about that, how was she feeling right now? It wasn't happiness, not exactly. What other word would apply?

"Content."

The woman in the strange uniform smiled at that. She should talk to the royal tailor, she didn't like these new uniforms her servants were wearing, They were white, sure, but not elegant at all.

"That's good to hear. Now, I have a letter here from a friend of yours, so how about you can read that now, and in about half an hour, I'll come back to get you for breakfast?"

A letter? From whom? One of her international relations? A fellow ruler requesting aid perhaps? She accepted the piece of paper the woman, girl really, gave her, and thanked her for her service. It was important to have the loyalty of your personnel after all. She observed the letter, written on a piece of paper. The writer had written it by hand, and attempted to make long flowing letters, but inexperience showed. The pen had left quite a few blots of ink, and some of the words were crossed out halfway through when there was a spelling mistake.

 _Dear Paige._

 _How are you? I am fine. I am staying with my dad in_ _Brokto_ _Brockton Bay. The city is_ _inredb_ _incredibly big. Yesterday my dad took me to the Forsberg Gallery, which is twenty-six stories tall. There was a lot of boring art, some nice art, and they had a fling flying motorcycle made by a tinker somewhere. We also went to the roof. The view was great, but it got really cold up there, and I really missed my big swarm scarf. We also saw Parian, who is a girl that can make stuffed_ _anmal_ _animals walk around and makes clothes._

 _I hope you are all right. It was very scary seeing all those tubes and_ _stits_ _stitches when you were in the hospital. Are the people nice in your new home?_

 _My broken arm and leg are a bother, because I cannot try on new clothes or walk very far. Stairs are difficult right now, but dad has put a bed down-stairs so it is not a really big problem._

 _We also watched lots of movies, my favorite was the star trek movie where they went back in time to find_ _wales_ _whales._

 _I have to go now, we are going to talk to a teacher from my new school. I hope it will not be too bad._

 _Goodbye_

 _~Sely_

Paige looked at the letter, happy in the knowledge that the girl was safe now. She was overly familiar, calling her by her first name, but she could live with that. Better her than her minister of psychiatry.

However, someone had taken the girl's scarf. An idea started brewing in her mind. She could remedy that.

A few minutes into the new task she had set for herself, someone knocked on the door again, before opening it. The same maid as previously, it seemed that her dinner had been prepared.

*** Blauwster ***

Blauwster relaxed in his recliner, and surveyed his kingdom, so to speak. He had done quite well for himself since Leviathan's attack. Sure, some people would call what he did a protection racket, but was that really that bad if you were legitimately protecting them from all who would harm them? Including the police and the military?

He opened up his laptop, and checked his e-mail. Still no reply. Worried, he opened up an American news-website, and searched for Wyoming.

The article he found was a fluff piece, not actually telling anything interesting, except that the problem was over now.

He checked a different website, one more specialized in cape news, and saw what he had feared the last few days. His friend was simply far too reckless. The article stated he had died, as well as his civilian identity, a local woodsman, a man of simple means. It did not, however, state how he died, except that it was in the fighting at the end. That woman maybe? Hallucca? Or someone else? His foreign friend Horn had been a courageous man, an unstoppable mind in an unstoppable body. He deserved to be avenged.

*** ? ***

She could see the transport through her binoculars, two heavily armed men sitting in front, quite possibly more guards in the back. With any luck, not too many of them parahuman. She gazed at the man in the passenger seat, and closed her eyes.

She could see the interior of the car, cigarette butts lying on the ground, as well as a plethora of fatty snacks. She was looking at her phone, with rather… creative… pornography playing. The man sitting next to her said something, but she couldn't understand it. A limit. She looked at him, and behind him, the window, behind that, fields of grassland, cows dotted around. She replied, and while waiting for the other participant in the conversation, she blinked.

She was standing in the middle of a green field, and her body hadn't expected that, she rubbed her eyes, sure that this was some sort of illusion.

She stood on the mountainside overlooking the road through a pair of binoculars, and looked at the driver of the transport

She was looking around, talking into a microphone, panicking, trying to stay on the round in all the madness, she looked around, looking for the assailant. She blinked.

She was standing in a field, behind her, she could see the car swerving around driverless, she couldn't believe her eyes, and rubbed at them.

She was standing on the mountain-side, looking at a transport on its side. Out of the back climbed a woman in a costume, muscles and scars visible below the armour plates. She closed her eyes.

She was looking around, searching for the attacker. The drivers had gone silent, and the car had crashed. A car just barely evaded them, tooting his horn. Was that the assailant? She looked at the back of the car to spot gunmen, when she blinked

She was in the back of the car, the driver panicking about the heavily armoured cape who had just appeared behind him. She shouted, yelled, and the man lost control. She blinked.

She was standing on the mountainside. And looked through her binoculars, at no-one in particular, just an empty spot behind the transport. She closed her eyes.

She was standing behind the transport, Some cash, some gold, and the thing she was here for. The painting, a Rembrandt. Quickly, she grabbed it in pristine condition, and shoved some other precious goods in her pockets, no reason to let it go to waste.

As the armoured person was running towards the car, she readied her binoculars again, and looked at the mountainside, specifically, at her motorcycle. She closed her eyes.

She laughed. Another successful heist. No-one had gotten hurt, minimal damage to the infrastructure, and another of the ancient masters for her collection.

Revving the engine, she wondered where she would go next. Some place with a nice beach to relax. Brockton Bay perhaps? After all, the world was her oyster, and no-one would ever catch her.

*** Assault ***

"So how was it?" Puppy asked, her beautiful puppy eyes staring into his.

"Fun, strangely enough. Turns out, all the rumours about Mouse Protector are true! Also, Skip is the best ten-year-old ever!"

"Good to hear, and the boss?"

"He's staying a few days, we might be getting a new ward if talks with her parents go well."

"I hope it's not going to be another teenage boy? Or at least one that's a little more subtle than Kid Win and Triumph?"

Assault had to chuckle at that, try as they might, hiding their eyes behind helmets and visors as they might, both of them were quite obviously rather intrigued by puppy's body. Not that he could blame them, her ass looked amazing, especially in costume.

She stood up, a slightly more serious look in her eyes.

"So, speaking about wards, have you thought about my proposal, getting you a replacement puppy?"

Ethan thought about it. At first, he'd dismissed it, thought it wouldn't be possible. But if it was, if they managed to make it work. He'd read the files, and she probably deserved a second chance. Having just done Colin a favour, and knowing how the protective the man was of his own daughter.

"I guess we can try. It might just work, It'll be hard work though, probably harder than just getting a baby. You sure you don't want to do that instead?"

His puppy laughed at him. "What, and let you patrol on your own while I'm stuck changing diapers? I didn't think so!"


	26. Chapter 5,1

**Gadget 5.1**

"Colin, what's wrong?" the synthesized voice called out.

Colin looked up at the screen in frustration. He had expected this entire endeavour to be, if not simple, at least not this ridiculously complicated. On his desk, and on the screens not occupied by Dragon's face, were scientific articles, books, conference proceedings and other such things.

"It's this entire field of study… Powers have been around since I was a kid and they still don't know anything. Half the papers contradict each other, and patterns are broken more often then they're actually followed."

"Parahuman studies huh? I know how frustrating that can be, there just don't seem to be that many answers, but maybe I can help, what are you looking for." Dragon answered him, her voice soft and calming, as allways.

He wasn't quite sure what to do. Wasn't even sure if he was actually looking for something, and even then, the problem was more personal, not work-related. He probably shouldn't even be doing this on company time, but all his hours of were now occupied, and he'd done enough overtime to make up for a small indiscretion.

"It's… The new ward, her story about Sely rescuing her. It just doesn't quite make sense. How did she get past the guards, how did she know the distraction was coming. I… I don't want to pressure Sely about it, she's gone through enough for now, but…" He stopped talking. This was not how he wanted people to see him. He was Armsmaster, leader of Protectorate ENE, one of the greatest tinkers around, a leader, a hero. Not a guy filled with insecurities about taking care of his daughter.

"But you're afraid that she triggered during the chaos, and is too afraid of herself to tell anyone." Dragon answered, completing the sentence for him.

"That's the gist of it, yes. So, I decided to do some more research about trigger events, and it just doesn't make any sense. For example, we know that children of parahumans generally have powers similar to their parents, the most obvious examples being the Pelham's. But we also know that there is some relation between the nature of the trigger event and the power. Physical events giving more physical powers, for example."

"Hmm, yes, I see where you're going with this. On one hand, we would expect her to be a tinker, given that you are one. On the other hand, we would expect her to be something else, since it was a specific event, or maybe a period of a few days, that led to it, rather than something extended, which seems to generally be the case with tinkers."

"Exactly, every time something fits, I find something else that doesn't. Take the new girl, everything about her circumstances says shaker, but when you look at her power it could just as well be classified as blaster or striker. There are so many powers that could fall into a plethora of categories that It's just ridiculous that they seem to use them in some of this research. I understand how mind control and minion summoning are similair in the field, but saying the trigger events should therefore also be similair seems ridiculous to me."

Dragon nodded, and seemed to be thinking about something.

"Well, I don't really see a solution right now, given the available literature. Maybe you should just wait. She'll probably be more comfortable around you in a few weeks, I'm sure that, if she has powers, she'll tell you when the time is right. Remember, she's been through a lot lately, and at that age, even just changing schools can be a huge deal. When did she start at Arcadia?"

"I… I guess I can drop the topic for now, It's just frustrating, not being able to do anything. They started this morning, it took a few days to gather enough decoys to mask Emma's identity."

"Well, let's hope this school survives longer than the last one." Dragon quipped, the artificial face distorting into something that was slightly too much like an emoticon. The advantages of a fake face.

*** Gadget ***

Brockton bay was big, really big. Much bigger than Westlake. It pained me to admit it, but, Westlake wasn't really a city in comparison to this.

And with big cities, came big schools. Even though Brockton Bay had more than one high school, Arcadia was still bigger than Westlake High.

That meant, of course, that I had to go exploring. And sure, I was technically missing my first class, but if anyone objected I could just say that I got lost.

Not that I had gotten lost, I totally knew where I was. I was just down the hallway from the bathrooms.

Except, of course, that according to this map they'd given me, every floor had three different sets of bathrooms. Given that I was probably on the third floor, which meant that I was about…

Where the hell was I…

The hallways were empty, and all I could see was a row of lockers, class-rooms, computer labs, what was either a music room or a torture chamber, and these damn bathrooms.

As had been explained at the meeting dad brought me to, the school lay-out was very simple. Every room had four numbers. One of them was the floor, another one was the wing of the building, and then there were two that denoted the specific room.

So that probably meant that, if you had to go to a room starting with a three, you went up three sets of stairs.

But now every room had a four in front. Did that mean I was in the fourth wing? If room one was on the ground floor, this should've been three.

Unless they started numbering at a thousand, but that wouldn't make any sense.

So, did I go downstairs again? The elevator was, probably, a bit back. If I remembered right. I turned around, one arm in a sling, the other holding a crutch. It was tricky, but I'd gotten the hang of it over the last few days. Most of the day had been filled by watching movies with dad, but we'd also explored the city a bit. The fact that I wasn't supposed to enter certain gang-controlled areas was… disconcerting, but I could understand it, given the amount of supervillains in town. Apparently, Lung was even more dangerous than Hallucca had been, and then there was the Neo-Nazi gang in town.

After some struggles with the elevator, I'd arrived on what I was pretty sure was supposed to be the third floor. Now I only had to explore the entire floor to figure out where my class was.

About five minutes in, I bumped into someone else, another girl with a school map in her hands.

"Hey, you looking for 3423 as well?" She asked.

I looked at my schedule, English was first. "No, 3148 I think."

I looked her over, she was about Emma's height, same hair colour, blonde as well. Weird, so many people starting on the same day in the middle of the year.

"I think 3148 is that way," she said, pointing to the hallway she came from. "You all right in getting there?"

"Yeah sure, I can make it" I replied, hopping forward in the direction she'd pointed in. "See ya later."

One corner later, I'd found the classroom, only half an hour late. I wondered for a second why Emma was in a different class, she'd been in the same year as I was, and we'd had almost all of our classes together in Westlake. Maybe it was something to do with her becoming a ward, getting special superhero classes.

I knocked on the door, and after a few seconds, the teacher opened the door. A woman, about thirty years old. Brown hair, nice clothes, glasses.

"I'm… um… I got lost, I'm Sely." I said, waving with my working hand, which was holding the crutch, and the papers I'd been given.

She took a look at me, and answered. "Yes, well, everyone else already got started on the group exercise so…" She turned to the class, and raised her voice. "Anyone mind having the new girl join their group?"

At that, I heard quite a few different voices exclaim that they wanted me in their group. I guessed school here wouldn't be too bad.

*** Battery ***

Jessica looked over her desk, filled with letters, forms, and other such documents. Correspondence with the district attorney, a notice from the attorney general, documents from CPS and the youth guard. It had been difficult, getting all this together, but her reputation had bought her a certain amount of good will from the local bureaucrats. In addition to that, the way the top brass had forced Ethan into her life meant that she had a certain amount of leeway there too. Even he had finally agreed with her plan.

It was silly, she knew. She was already a hero, had saved countless people, fought the endbringers on multiple occasions. But still, every time she thought about it, there was that niggling feeling at the back of her mind. _you're a fake_. It said. She knew, deep down, that everything special about her had come from a bottle. One on which she still needed to finish her payment.

Collecting the odds and ends, she got ready for the last step. The one person, two if you counted Piggot, that she hadn't discussed her plan with. Documents in hand, she went for Armsmaster's lab.

When she entered through the door, she saw that he was chatting with Dragon about a project, she wasn't quite sure what, tinker-talk was generally beyond her.

"Working hard, or hardly working?" She asked, before realizing how incredibly cliche that line must have been. It was annoying, hanging out with Ethan when she just couldn't keep up with the puns.

Armsmaster looked at her with… was that a small twinge of guilt on his face? Had he actually been slacking of? Dragon just smiled, and said "Good afternoon Battery."

At that, Armsmaster nodded in acknowledgement of her presence. "Is there anything you wanted to ask?"

"Yes, there is, do you have a moment?"

"… Sure."

"Mind if I sit in?" Dragon interjected. Of course, given her information-gathering prowess, she probably already knew what she wanted to ask.

When Jessica went to put the papers on Armsmaster's desk, she noticed a picture frame there, a recent addition. It was Armsmaster, Colin, seeing as he was dressed in his civilian clothes, with his arm around a girl with one arm in a sling and a crutch, standing on top of the Forsberg gallery, if she recognized the view correctly. Both of them were smiling, and it wasn't the kind of fake smile you usually saw on pictures.

"Sure, no problem Dragon. Now, Armsmaster, you know that girl living in the north end of town? Hellhound?"

*** Gadget ***

I had made it through the two-hour (one and a half for me) English class, and even found some people who shared my next class. Jonas, Blake and May escorted me to our next class, making sure I didn't get lost again.

"So, you're one of the decoys huh?" May asked. She was Japanese American, or Chinese American, or something like that. Small, short black hair.

"… Decoy?"

"Yeah, it's like, all the wards go here, so whenever there's a new ward, they just bump like twenty similar people up the waiting list and enroll them all at once to hide the new hero's identity." May explained.

Well, that explained the other transfers I saw.

"Not sure I ever was on a waiting list, I just moved to the bay a week ago." I replied.

"So where are you from?" Blake asked. Blake could be described in two words. He was black, and he was fat, the combination of the 50-cent style haircut and man-boobs wasn't very impressive. Heck, his assets were bigger than mine, not that I had all that much of anything, at least not in comparison to people like Emma.

"Westlake."

"Isn't that the place that was in the news?" Jonas asked.

"Yup" I answered, which started a cannonade of questions.

"Was it scary"

"yup"

"Did you meet the crazy super-villain that took over the town?"

"Yup"

"Was she scary?"

"Nope"

"Wait… Nope?"

"Yup"

"How was she not scary?"

"She was nice, also crazy."

"She wasn't scary because she was crazy?"

"Yup"

"Did you see any heroes"

"Yup"

"Did you see Myrddin?"

"Nope"

"Did you know he thinks he's a wizard?"

"Yup, cause he is."

"No he's not, he's just a parahuman."

And that was the point where the discussion started deteriorating. Some things remained constant no matter where you were.

"Yes he is, he has magic wizard powers."

"Power's aren't magic!"

"What about magnet powers?"

"So you think tinkers are magic?"

"So you think prophecies aren't magic?

And so on and so on.

Still, we made it to class on time somehow.

The second class of the day, the class before lunch, was World Issues, a class where we would discuss the fact that the world had issues. I wasn't quite sure why, it sounded like that fact was obvious enough to all observers, but whatever. This time, instead of a group project, there was a lecture on the dangers of racism, sexism, and a whole lot of other stuff like that. Like not treating stupid people as if they were stupid, stuff like that. It was all rather boring, and I spend most of the class drawing stuff, stuff being people in class, people I'd met, and some sketches for awesome super-thievery outfits, until one of the students, a brown-haired kid apparently called Chris, asked a question about discrimination against parahumans. Capes. That got people talking, instead of listening to the teacher.

Opinions ranged far and wide. One girl said that, since parahumans were obviously superior, they couldn't technically be discriminated against. When the teacher brought up certain pieces of complicated-sounding legislation, the discussion went on about that. If there were laws against capes doing some things, how would they proof you were a cape. The teacher said that there was a thingy in the brain that everyone with powers had. Did that mean I could hide my powers if I made something that foiled brain scanners? I started thinking of ideas on how to scan brains and how to stop the brain-scanners, making short sketches for how they would look, when I got interrupted.

"Sely, you've had some close encounters with parahumans, what do you think, should there be laws specifically for them, either for or against?"

At that, the rest of the students looked at me, noting the cast around my leg, as well as my broken arm. How had the teacher even known? I remembered the article, the one about me being kidnapped, that would've done it, quite easy to piece things together knowing I was from Westlake.

"It's, well, all of them are different, and a lot of them are kinda crazy, so… I guess, like, the law is supposed to the same for everyone, because everyone is the same, but capes aren't the same as other people, and none of them have the same power, so… I guess it's that you'd need a separate law for every cape, so maybe it's better to just make it up as you go along? Because, like, if someone has everything they think become real, then they wouldn't be allowed to think stuff?"

I really wasn't quite sure what my point had been there, I'd just… gotten distracted about halfway through or something.

Luckily, class ended before there was any time for follow-up questions. Which meant lunch, which meant food, and hopefully being able to talk to Emma again. I wondered what she was thinking, knowing that there'd been two dozen decays just to keep her identity secret.

*** Argenta ***

Being Emma Smith was suffering.

First, two hours of computer classes where she had to pretend she wasn't the new ward everyone was talking about, and was instead a decoy.

Then, two hours of math class, she didn't need to say more.

Then, lunch. Which would've been okay, if she could just go sit with Sely. Except Armsmaster had advised her that it would be smarter if it wasn't immediately obvious to everyone that they knew each other, seeing as the whole Westlake thing could be kind of a giveaway.

Thus, Emma was all on her own, recognizing only two people in the entire building. One of them, Sely, was sitting on the other side of the cafeteria with some people she'd met, while the other, Rory, who was in his last year, pretended not to know her as well, given that that would be suspicious.

Rory of course, was better known as Triumph, and was the team leader. They'd met during power testing, He was cool, awesome, amazing, confident, attractive, and three years older than her. That last part was the problem.

Two more classes after this. It sucked, having to sit through classes. The director, Pi-Go or something, had informed them about some sort of co-op program that would allow her to spend the second half of the school-day as a ward, but her father had insisted on proper education. Afterwards, her mom had told Emma and the director she'd talk about it with father, but for now, she had to go to all the classes, all day long.

Then, when she was done, she'd meet with branding, and they'd get started on her costume. Which would be amazing, because Armsmaster had pulled some strings and gotten a large block of some sort of tinker-made silver alloy, which they would try to change into her outfit. Sure, technically speaking, it was a very effective choice because of its high conductivity helping her with her power, but it was also incredibly glamorous.

If only she could gush about it to someone. Having amazing stuff wasn't any fun when you couldn't actually tell anyone about it.

So, the entire lunch was instead spend on trying to figure out if Arcadia had a cheer-leading team, and figuring out how to sign up for that.

Emma, no, Argenta, moved the block of metal up and down. It was easy, even easier than the alloy she'd taken from Hallucca. The problem was precision. She could bend it into rough shapes, but she couldn't exactly create lightweight armor from it, that was way too difficult, but Leah had said they'd get someone else to forge it into its proper now, they were discussing how it should look. Eventually, when Leah had seen a picture of her spear, they'd decided on something medieval, like a knight. Maybe her parents wouldn't be perfectly happy with such an un-ladylike outfit, but Emma was feeling just a teeny bit rebellious, and hoped she could get away with it. The helmet was smooth, with a heart-shape opening in the front, from her eyes to her chin. It would have a variable visor that would usually just cover the eyes, but could also turn into a complete plate, that would help against smoke and dust, or gas attacks. The armour design was less defined, they had decided on making it spacious in front, to allow for growth, given how endowed Emma's mother was, but that was pretty much all they had for the body and arms.

The best part was around the legs, where she'd have a combination of pants and skirt. On first glance, the skirt would seem almost dress-like, but they would actually be individual strips of metal covered in an insulator, that she would be able to wrap around people. Another thing they'd tested yesterday.

Generally speaking, her electricity would connect to anything conductive nearby, but a small layer of insulator around the metal allowed her control without danger to the surrounding materials. In the same vein, the incredible conductivity of the silver alloy meant she wouldn't automatically zap everyone around her when using her power.

Being able to arrest people with her skirt was useful, because she wasn't actually allowed to zap anyone until she'd completed several courses on safety and anatomy and electricity and stuff. It sounded complicated, but she could understand it, given what she'd done…

…

"Hey sweety, is something wrong?" Leah asked.

"I… nothing, just…"

"C'mon then, let's get something to drink after all our hard work."

Leah took her hand, and brought her to the break room. Sitting down on the couch, Emma accepted the hot choco she was offered, trying desperately not to let it spill.

After about three minutes, someone else entered the room, a girl in costume, even younger than her.

"Good afternoon Vista, have you met Argenta yet?"

The girl looked at her, her eyes hovering at about chest-level, her face looked conflicted.

"Hi Argenta, nice to meet you." She said, holding out a hand.

"I… Hi." Emma replied, not really sure what else to say.

Eventually, Vista just decided to sit down next to her.

"So, you two draw up anything good yet?" Vista asked, trying to cheer her up.

"I… A little bit. Do, do you want to see?" Emma replied.

"Sure, show me what you got! Maybe I can help!"

"Well. Uhm, here's the helmet, and this part is going to be glass, and then I can use this part here with my power for this part and well"

Watching the two wards made a smile appear upon Leah's face. Adorable as she was, Vista always knew what to say to cheer people up.


	27. Chapter 5,2

**Gadget 5.2**

Stupid stupid stupid little Sely. I had been so utterly stupid.

It had taken me two entire days of wandering about to actually figure this thing out.

Sure, getting on the roof with one working leg and half an arm would be difficult to almost everyone. But I wasn't just anyone, was I now? I had something other people didn't, I had magic tinker powers.

I didn't need to figure out some sneaky path to the PA room that I could take even while wounded. I just needed to find a way to hijack the signal.

In the same vein, there was probably some sort of tinker-tech way to fill the coffee machines with laxatives, or maybe glitter.

I just had to find myself some time and materials. Once I had those, I just needed to get close to one of the wires involved in the PA system. It was too much to ask for it to be wireless. Arcadia had some sort of fancy schmancy faraday cage stopping electromagnetic waves.

I looked around, seeing what I could use. Right now I was lying on the couch in front of the TV in dad's, or, I guess, mine as well now, home. Some show about earth Aleph was on, but I wasn't really paying attention to it. The couch was amazing, big, wide and fluffy, perfect for lazily watching movies. The TV itself was a widescreen plasma thingy, with about a dozen speakers spread throughout the room. Beneath it was a cable-box, a barely used games console, and a media-server. I'd tried my hand at the console for a bit, but not only was playing with one hand nearly impossible; the few games dad had were really difficult. I just wanted to go racing, not calculate what tires I needed in what kind of weather.

Behind the couch was a wall filled with books and magazines. Some fiction, but mostly sciency stuff, both the really complicated stuff from experiments, as well as some easier. The scientific texts were really interesting, but I didn't understand half the words in them, which made them difficult to read.

The kitchen would be more promising, but it was hard to focus around the coffee machine, which was amazing. Mostly because it also made hot chocolate, and because it was voice-controlled. You could just say what you wanted and it would make it for you, marshmallow included. It was also incredibly efficient, able to make two different drinks at once.

Problem was, whatever I took, dad would probably notice it was gone. I couldn't rely on him being as dense as mom or Henry. My stash of stuff in Westlake had been destroyed, and I wouldn't have been able to bring it along anyway. Acquiring new stuff in the same way was… problematic, given the fact that I hobbled instead of walked for now.

How much would I need anyway? Not that much for something to intercept and reprogram the Announcement system. Some wiring and a small processor with a bit of memory would be more effective. I could probably manage to fit in a slot for digital storage, so that I could use it multiple times with a different message.

So I'd need some money. Problem was, I hadn't actually stored any money in my GadgetSpace, given that it would disappear when I needed it.

But, I had O'Neill's wallet, which, if I remembered correctly, had some cash in it. That would have to do then.

I grabbed my new phone, another present from dad, and typed out a message.

*** Triumph ***

Triumph took a sideways glance at his boss, not sure what this was all about. It wasn't like he hadn't done patrols with a protectorate member before, but most of those had been at the start of his tenure as a ward. Ever since he'd become team leader last month, he had been the senior partner on almost all of his patrols.

Right now, they were walking through the streets near the boardwalk, not in any way a dangerous area that necessitated there being two of them. It was strange.

"So, how are you finding leadership?" Armsmaster asked.

Ah, so that was what this was about. The patrol was merely an excuse for a more informal conversation.

The question, however, made him think. He'd only had a month of leadership behind him, and not much had happened in the meantime. They'd been in a single real right, when the merchants of all people had staged an escape attempt. There'd been just three of them, him, Vista and Aegis, but they'd done pretty well, or so he thought. Only one of the merchants, Mush, had escaped, and that only because they'd been ordered away from the area. One of Squealer's vehicles had taken heavy damage, and had been starting to burn, Piggot had made the call for them to move away from the area, fearing a large explosion.

"It's… more frustrating than I thought." He answered. "The paperwork, the regulations, I'd never really realized how much of that went into the entire operation."

Armsmaster nodded at that. "Trust me, It's even worse when you're a Tinker, back when I started out, I needed to file a report for just about every nut and bolt I used. That's why these days, there's a discretionary budget for costuming and such."

A personal anecdote, or at least something resembling, from Armsmaster? Today seemed to be a special day.

"It's also… I find it hard to switch between hanging out with my friends and being their leader, you know. It's hard to hang out with my peers when I know they'll have to do as I say the moment we put on our costume."

They walked on together, Armsmaster thinking about what he had said.

"You should try keeping in contact with others, people who aren't capes, or PRT. That will make it easier to divorce your job and your friends. And it becomes rather difficult to do such things later in your career, since most everyone you meet will either be a cape or PRT personnel."

"I… I can kind of get that. It's… I meet most people at school, and I can't even play sports anymore. If all I did was work…"

"It's the paradox of being a hero. The more you try to protect people, the more separate from them you become. If you fully devote your life to protecting the things that you love, you might one day find out that they don't love you back, because they don't actually know you."

Strange, to see Armsmaster so philosophical. Triumph wondered why, maybe he should ask Assault what happened, or Argenta.

Armsmaster continued: "So, if someone tries to tell you to let go of the things you love the better to protect them, don't."

He thought about that for a while. It was an interesting perspective, especially in how it clashed with the way heroes acted, at least on TV. He'd long since understood that actors and screenwriters didn't really understand how being a cape worked. On TV, someone figuring out your civilian identity was a far more real problem. Sure, you wouldn't want anyone to know who you were, but people generally didn't go searching in real life, unless it was personal. A helping of professionalism worked wonders against that, the entire hero/villain thing was semi-preposterous every now and then, and the more agreeable villains were perfectly okay with getting arrested as part of the job hazards. It didn't work with the more serious villains, but Piggot tried to make sure that the wards were focused on the lesser threats. Your Uber and 1337's.

So, when capey mc-capeface broke up with her girlfriend to protect her from harm, well, then that was really a problem of incompetence on the hero's part wasn't it? Self-sacrifice to help others might be an important part of being a hero, but such things didn't actually help anyone. A villain determined enough to figure out your identity and your girlfriend would also be determined enough to figure out that you broke up with her to protect her, and that killing her would still hurt. Plus, to a real hero, the relationship shouldn't even matter, everyone should be protected.

He looked over at his boss again, who was looking at something in his visor. It was subtle, but you could see by the way he didn't actually seem to be looking at anything in particular, even though his head was slightly moving. Armsmaster suddenly grabbed his phone, and held it up to him.

"So, Triumph, could you translate this for me?"

He looked at the screen, and read the message.

"going 2 mall 4 a bit, b 6 k?"

*** Gadget ***

"Of course, there's some money in the key bowl that you can use, have fun and be home in time for dinner."

That was… nice. It would mean I wouldn't need to pay with disappearing money. I checked the bowl of keys, car, motorcycle, house door, some stuff I didn't really recognize, and below all that, a small wallet. Checking the cash, I figured out what dad called "some money".

Roughly seven-hundred bucks.

I knew that dad wasn't poor. I wasn't quite sure what his job entailed, but from the furniture and everything it obviously paid well enough. The house itself was halfway between an apartment and a house, two floors, with the top floor having a balcony that overlooked the living room. It was located on the outer edge of a larger complex. The front door went to the street outside, but the backdoor went to a large indoor garden-type thing, shared by several houses. From there, you could take the elevator up to other apartments, seeing as the building was six floors high. All of it was well-kept, and to get to the indoor area you'd need to either live on the lower floor, where you could just take the back door, or you had to pass a security guard at a desk.

So, all in all, not a cheap affair. That didn't mean I'd expected him to just have 700 bucks lying around. Although, given the type of stuff he seemed to spend it on, it did seem that it was about what he'd need for a shopping trip.

The mall, a local shopping centre with lots of small stores with way too expensive coffee, was just two streets over, a distance I could actually walk. So, I set out, cash in hand, keys in pocket dimension.

*** Argenta ***

"I'm still not sure about that outfit, I mean, it's a bit too, colourful? I guess? It makes me look like a little kid. I'm in middle school." Missy said.

Missy, or Vista, was amazing. She was smart, she was strong, she was incredibly confident. She just didn't have a lick of fashion sense. Emma blamed it on hanging out with boys four years older than her all the time. Aegis was nice, and Triumph was, well, it was improper to think about that kind of stuff, but they were also dudes. They farted, they burped, and they fought crime.

"Relax, it's fine, it brings out your natural charm. Trust me, there's more than one way to make guys like you. You have to play to your strengths instead of spending all your time on overcoming your weaknesses."

Emma took another sip of her coffee, or, at least, her caffeinated drink from a coffee store. It contained very little coffee, and a very large amount of other things.

Vista still seemed down, and Emma could sympathize with the problem. She hadn't met the other girl yet, but from the fact that she was a full-blown celebrity, Emma could understand that Missy felt like she couldn't possibly beat her in the fight for Gallant.

It was a bit icky, Gallant was quite a few years older than Missy, but it was about the principle of the thing, not the specifics. The girl had cheered her up, so now it was her turn to be cheered up in return. Shopping usually did the trick, at least for Emma.

"So, how's training coming along?" Vista asked.

"It's… well… It hurts to sit right now" Emma replied, thinking back to the hand-to-hand lessons she'd followed. Most of the first lesson had involved being thrown on the mat time and time again, all the while trying to keep a lid on her power. That was more difficult than she'd expected. It seemed like her power almost instantly reacted the moment something surprised her. She could shake hands all right, but once someone approached her from behind and put a hand on her shoulder, she'd have to try very hard not to zap him or her.

"Well, you'll be happy to hear there won't be too many of them." Vista replied, an emphatic look on her face.

"Why not? Isn't knowing how to fight important?"

"Well, sure, but close quarters? Hand to hand? Generally speaking, if it comes to that, it's up to powers, not martial arts. If someone isn't lightning-proof, he's gonna get zapped, whether he's a black belt or not. Much the same way, a sleeper hold doesn't really work on someone like Hookwolf. It's more important to get a feel for where someone is going to strike, than to actually train specific techniques."

That was why Emma liked Vista, she just knew everything when it came to being a hero.

"I guess that makes sense."

She looked around the plaza, small boutiques and large chain stores littering the area. She still hadn't gotten used to the contrast, how, in one area, the city was thriving, money from the high-tech industry invigorating the area, and then, two streets over, you'd find masses of homeless, gangsters, junks.

Then, something caught her attention, a girl walking on crutches, she recognized Sely. Holding up one arm, she waved at her, and called her over.

Sely slowly hopped over, a shopping bag attached to her crutch.

"Sup Ems?"

"We're just having a drink, do you want to join us?"

Sely grabbed her phone from her pocket, a manoeuvre far more complicated that it sounded, given her physical state.

"Sure, I got about an hour or so to waste."

As she sat down, Emma realized that it would be rather hard for her to go get some coffee in her state. And that she hadn't actually introduced her two friends to each other.

"Missy, this is Sely, Sely, this is Missy."

"Hiya" Sely said, holding a hand out.

"Hi" Missy replied, shaking the hand.

"I will go get you something, chocolate milk right?" Emma said

Sely nodded, and slumped down in her chair, obviously tired from hopping around everywhere. Leaving the two girls behind, she entered the store to get Sely's drink. The line had grown since she'd gotten her coffee, and it looked like she was in for a bit of a wait.

It was only in the line that she realized what she'd just done. Sely knew she was a ward, did that mean that she could now figure out who Missy was? This secret identity stuff was hard.

Then, of course, there was the fact that Sely probably had powers of some sort. The man at the door had been sleeping when she answered, to say nothing about the magically appearing wrench and wallet. She hadn't said anything about that to anyone, because secret identities were important, everyone knew that. Plus, Armsmaster had probably already known, having powers were the sort of thing you told your parents about.

Why the man had asked her not to tell Sely he was Armsmaster, she couldn't quite understand.

Eventually, she had the drink for Sely, and a new set of drinks for her and Missy as well, it had been a long line.

What she saw when she got back, was not what she'd expected. Sely and Missy were intently looking at a piece of paper, on which Sely had drawn something with a pen.

On closer inspection, it turned out that Sely had been drawing miniature versions of the local capes, and from what she'd read about him, chibi-Lung had no right to be that damn cute, with his cuddly little tail.

"Drinks are here" She said, and the other girls happily started drinking, and Emma relaxed a little. Things had been getting better the last two weeks. No power outages, no crazy drugs, no Horn. It had helped that Sely moved here at the same time, and that there was another girl on the wards.

"So you guys see that VR thing in the tech store?" Sely asked, breaking the silence with a completely different topic

"Not me, you Missy?"

"Heard about it from a friend, but haven't seen it yet."

Hearing that, Sely saw it as an excuse to start motormouthing: "It's a new thing that's, like, inspired by tinker stuff but not actually tinker stuff so it doesn't actually need cape maintenance and it's really cool I heard they're doing some really cool stuff like it's not only games but there's a thing where you walk on the moon, or like through a museum so you can just go to the Louvre so it's basically a teleporter except it doesn't have the problem that it has in Star-Trek where it completely destroys your body and makes a clone or something because you're not actually going somewhere and I wonder if you could make like a robot that then did the stuff you did in VR but instead of VR it was just a camera on top of the robot so you could go different places really easy and then they could give the robot a jetpack and you could fly and." Sely stopped, just long enough to catch her breath in one big gulp "they could give it a grappling hook that could totally work because normally like I saw on TV that most grappling hooks don't work because you can't just shoot them into the wall because the wall isn't strong enough to pull you up but then instead you put a forcefield or something in it to make the wall stronger so it can carry you and you could climb up buildings in your robot-building and basically be a cape by being a robot and you'd never have to go outside and then instead of soldiers you'd have" She gasped again "Massive Nerds like Percy and instead of bootcamp they just play videogames all day but instead of videogames it's just walking around in a different place and I bet if they put in like a thing to hijack the signal you could take over the enemy robots and then like the entire battle would be trying not to have your robots stolen, and then to stop that they could put in a thing that looks at how fast the robot is going and if it goes slow because it is hacked then it explodes like in that movie with the buss that couldn't slow down because then it would explode."

So, obviously Sely had found something she thought was interesting. And, to be fair, Emma actually agreed that VR was interesting, imagine a recording taken by someone in a professional cheerleading squad, or pretending you were Alexandria on patrol.

"Ehhmm. I lost you at-" Before Missy could finish her sentence, Emma had her mouth covered. Unlike most people, Sely remembered. If she thought someone wanted to hear the entire thing again, she would restate it verbatim.

This wasn't Emma's first Rodeo with her.

"Speed, right? That movie?" She interjected.

"Yup." Sely answered. The trick was making her believe you'd listened to the entire thing, by replying to the last sentence. That way, she eventually stopped. Although, the last month and a half or so, she hadn't really gushed about anything the way she'd done right now, even when her usual topics (downloading cars, animal rights, and school rules) had come up. Still, it was good to see that she was back in shape here.

What wasn't nice to hear, was the alarms going off in a nearby store.

*** Rose ***

She stood in the middle of the store, a black scarf around the lower half of her face, the top covered by a black cowboy-hat. She wasn't quite sure about the hat, but it was stylish.

Rather than some attention grabbing costume, she wore a suit, tailored to her body, covering a set of body armour. The effect was useful, allowing her to instantly change from master thief to business-lady.

Rose looked around, two guards lying on the ground, zapped by her tasers. It was easy, taking them down when they didn't even know she existed.

Another guard came running, gun held in his hands. She blinked, and turned to strike him in the back of the head. That would buy her some time. She closed her eyes, and went back to her target. Experimental Virtual Reality gear, using synesthetic effects to enhance the images.

True enough, it wasn't tinker-tech. It did, however, utilize a cape-made substance in its processing core, something which made it very much non-standard technology, very much almost one of a kind, and very much worth grabbing.

The people around her, they weren't screaming, even though her entrance had tripped the alarm. Some of them had grabbed their phones, not to call the police, but rather to film her.

Cape groupies…

She grabbed the item, and targeted a point on the other side of the plaza, through the store windows. She appeared on top of a table, three girls staring at her in surprise.

Behind her, she could hear some idiot shouting. "Stop her", or something like that.

"Sorry about the drinks" she said, noting the spills her appearance had caused. Then, before they could react, she closed her eyes. Just before she shifted, she felt something paw at her heels. One of the girls?

It didn't matter, She excluded the thing touching her, it wouldn't do to steal a ring or anything, at least not when she didn't plan to.

She blinked again, appearing on top of a nearby building. She looked down at the girl. One of them looked scared, the youngest, the one that had grabbed at her leg, looked angry. The third one, her arm in a sling and a crutch standing by her chair, had a different expression on her face. Admiration?

*** Triumph ***

They were nearing the end of their patrol, Triumph had suggested a small detour through Merchant territory, but Armsmaster had denied the suggestion, saying that he had to be home in time for dinner.

Dinner, not nutrient-paste. That was new. That, together with the conversation from earlier, made him think that Sely was a good influence on his boss.

"So, before we arrive back at the PRT base, has Battery actually informed you about her plan?"

Plan? He couldn't remember any plans from Battery, had he missed an important message?

"I guess not, at least, nothing springs to mind.

"As I suspected, she went to everyone except the people who actually matter in this. So, to begin with, do you remember the briefing on the girl that has been hanging out on the edges of town? The one with the dogs?"

"That was Hellhound right? I thought she wasn't a problem?"

"Not much of one at least. It's rather easy to manage her, Piggot's instructed the local supermarket to store it's dog food at the front of the store, and insurance covers most of the rest. Only real problem is when someone annoys her, usually some incident regarding her pets. Leave her alone, and she's content to stay to herself."

"So, what about her?"

"Battery, and by extension Assault, thinks she can turn her."

"Turn her? didn't she have a massive record? Including a murder charge?" He couldn't quite believe it. The girl might not be a problem right now, but all the incidence reports stated that she acted aggressively. That she was dangerous.

"It's… complicated, and I'm not entirely happy about how Battery went about it, but she cut a deal with the courts. As long as Hellhound accepts certain terms of probation, they will greatly reduce her sentence. Given the circumstances of the murder charge, I actually agree with that part, but for the rest…"

"What circumstances? And what's the rest of the deal?"

"Apparently, the murder happened directly after the trigger event, when she had little control over her powers, and was against the person responsible for her gaining them. I… suspect you understand why I can sympathize."

He did not, in fact, understand. Still, he nodded.

"As for the rest of the deal, she'll join the wards, she'll constantly have a tracking device on her, and Battery will keep her under close supervision, something which apparently includes adopting her."

"Wait, so I'll have a murderess on my team?"

What Battery wanted to do on her own time, that was her choice, but a known murderer? Could he really lead with someone like that on his team? It was hard enough to keep Aegis and Gallant on point, let alone some psycho-killer.

"You will nominally have Rachel on your team" Armsmaster replied, an unhappy expression crossing his lips. "In practice, however, she'll spend most of her time patrolling with a Protectorate member, someone that can control her if she becomes overly violent. I do, however, expect you to make sure the team makes her feel welcome if everything works out. She's a master that has spent the last few years away from most human contact, saying she might be lonely is drastically understating it."

He could… accept that, maybe. But still, someone that violent that she'd kill someone?


	28. Chapter 5,3

**Gadget 5.3**

Emma looked at the woman sitting on the other side of the table. She estimated the woman to be about fifty years old, her short hair dyed an ugly blonde, with the roots clearly visible, and an absolutely horrible set of reading glasses hanging from a cord around her neck, right next to it was a pearl necklace, as well as a little cross on a chain. All resting on her large and formless bosom. The nameplate on her desk said "Mrs Brown, Youth Guard representative".

On her desk, and pasted around the room, were pictures and bad drawings. Her children, probably. Going by the pictures, they were around the age of ten. Going by the drawings, they were about the age of five.

The woman started speaking, an unpleasant noise coming from someone that seemed to be quite used to shouting. It reminded her of someone who was very much not her mother, but rather the opposite. To borrow from her brothers vocabulary, this woman was the stick, not the carrot.

"Nice to meet you little miss. I'm Miranda Brown." The woman said.

Emma held out her hand, and waited for the woman to shake it. She was wearing her undersuit, as well as her new helmet. The undersuit, so-called because it went under her armour. Most of it was standard issue, made out of a material that had some resistance to electricity. What was specialized about it, was the small wires crisscrossing beneath it, channelling her electricity to specific points on her body. Some of them went to her hands, others to her feet, but most of her power was directed towards the back of her torso. It had been based upon a failed design from Chris, from when he'd tried his hand at making a jetpack. He'd gotten frustrated halfway through, but the attachment points had been completed.

When the first prototype of her armour had been done, she'd tried flying with it, or, rather, pushing it away from the ground. She couldn't truly fly, as there needed to be a line of electricity between the things she was moving. If she just moved the armour up, without touching the ground, nothing would actually happen. It was like pushing something from both sides at once, nothing would happen. What did work, was then pushing her electricity down, which pushed herself up. It was hard, the ground wasn't a great conductor, but it was easier when there was metal around. Although She'd been instructed to be very careful around cars and other such things, as the electricity might damage the more precise equipment.

According to Armsmaster, the new points in the suit would make her flight, or hovering, easyer. Something about how Chris's situation meant that the stuff he designed generally had less to do with math or something, being more intuitive in use. Given the equations he had shown her on where to apply force for stable flight, she thought this was a better solution, floating around upside down had been… disorienting.

"I'm Argenta" she replied, still waiting. Eventually, the woman decided to shake her hand.

"I'm afraid I haven't been given your name, could you please tell me?"

"What do you mean? I just told you, I'm Argenta."

The woman sighed. "No, you're not." She said, a tired look on her face, as if she was explaining something that should have been obvious. "Your codename is Argenta. Your title as a Parahuman, is Argenta. I'm not here to talk with Argenta, I'm here to talk to the girl sitting in front of me."

She wasn't quite sure what to do now. Everyone knew that capes kept their identity a secret, you didn't just tell anyone. Sure, you told your teammates and your parents, but not random people that wanted to talk to you.

And what was this nonsense of her not being Argenta. That was the entire point of a secret identity wasn't it.

"Look miss, I'm part of the youth guard, I'm here to help you. In order to help you, I need to know what you need. Now, when I say that, you need to understand that I'm not here to help Argenta, I'm here to help you. The high-school girl behind that helmet. "

"But… Everyone says I shouldn't tell people my…"

"Look sweety, that's about potential enemies, classmates, people from the press. You can trust me."

"I… how do I know if I can trust you?"

The woman looked at her, was she getting impatient? "The youth guard is here to help you by definition. It's the reason we were created, to make sure you have a life that is not just being a hero or a soldier."

"So why do you need to know my name?"

"Because it's symbolic, because it makes it clear that I'm talking to you, and not to Argenta."

"…But I don't want that."

The woman sighed. "Can you explain to me why you don't want that?"

"… I… I don't want to be me… I want to be Argenta."

The woman just didn't understand. Emma was scared of things she didn't know, Emma was always a stickler for the rules and a proper young lady. Argenta? Argenta was cool and badass and she could hover and she wore a suit of armor and she fought criminals. She was a hero, she didn't have a voice squeakyer than a mouse, she didn't lose her voice when Kenneth, or Jonas, or now Rory, talked to her.

"That's exactly what I mean..." The woman said.

This woman was so… so utterly… She just didn't know anything. She was like Emma had been, before… When she was still naïve, a ditz. She was better now, no longer miss proper, but strong and tough like Vista was.

She eyed the door. Could she? Would she? It was probably against the rules, but… She was Argenta now, Argenta was kind of a loose cannon.

"Trust me, you're not the first child to lose herself in all this cape business. Everyone else here may be okay with that but-"

The door shut behind her before the Youth Guard woman could finish her sentence. She looked around, at the lock, and asked herself. 'what would Sely do?'

A quick spark later, she walked back to the Ward's common room, hearing someone banging on the door behind her.

*** Gadget ***

It had taken a few days, but I was finally done.

I'd re-dyed my hair, choosing to keep it long, but adding some red, blue, purple and black. In addition to that, I'd also found the time to work on my new project, a device that would analyse and hijack electrical signals being sent over a wire, partially inspired by my camera looper. It was more general-purpose, able to hijack different signals, but that came with a small problem. I needed to analyse the system first, by recording the signal. Then, once I had that info, I could revert that and make it send out what I actually wanted. In addition to that, I had a small receiver that I could keep with me, that would send the recorded data into a USB-stick, and could be used for remote-control as well.

Combine that with my power, and I could install my device, wait several hours, hijack the system, and have all evidence disappear before anyone came along to find it.

So, now to decide what to do with it. My first idea had been fart noises during the morning announcements. A bit uninspired, but you couldn't go wrong with the classics. I could also just change what the messages said. The promise of Pizza during lunch while all there was was soup or something could work.

Or I could do something somewhat more exotic. Fake supervillain attack? Call in the wards publicly? Or just some really bad music? Old German political speeches?

Not knowing what to do with the invention, it'd probably be a better idea to just do something else first. I grabbed my laptop and started browsing, Dad would be home in about half an hour, after which we'd probably figure out what to do for dinner. I debated going to my room instead, but decided against it. I hadn't really had time to decorate it, or buy much of anything, and it wasn't that big anyway. Dad had said It used to be his laundry room. The house wasn't really designed for multiple bedrooms.

PHO was still ablaze with rumours about everything and nothing. The recruitment of a new ward (I was pretty sure it was Emma, she'd just have to be set up with a costume and everything first.), the existence of a super-villain without powers, the idea that Velocity and Eidolon were secretly lovers, something about Armsmaster trying to arrest some girl called Spitfire, and finally what I had been looking for. The topic was about a super-villain going by the name of Rose. Or, rather, that was the name she had been given, because as a calling card, she often left behind a single rose petal. I couldn't quite remember that from the day at the mall, but that did seem to be something she was taking the blame for.

The page just said her power was teleportation, something that was quite simple to figure out from seeing her. She just zipped in, tasered anyone guarding her target, and zipped out again with the loot. Right now, there were discussions on what she was using the Virtual Reality stuff for. Which reminded me that I still had to get the stuff to make that grappling hook I wanted.

I sat down on the couch and put my laptop away, the internet didn't have any useful info on Rose. There was some sort of weird show about capes, focussing on a local Rogue by the name of Parian. Unlike what the name seemed to imply, Rogue's weren't actually criminals, nor could they go into stealth mode. Some of the people on TV seemed to like her, while others said that she should just become a hero if she loved the city.

That made absolutely no sense, unless the people saying that were all cops, it was just a big load of hypocrisy. And basically slavery too, except just for people with masks on.

I heard the front door open, and dad walked in. I looked up from my rather comfortable position lying on the couch to see him walk into the room. It must've rained since I got home from school, because his hair was wet. He didn't look too happy.

"Eefnin dad."

He nodded, but didn't say anything in return. Instead, he sat down on the couch next to me.

"Sely… I just got a phone-call. Do you know who called me?"

Call dad… who would call dad? Who would call him that I would know about? Maybe that girl he sometimes talked about? The one with all the movie recommendations? What was her name again anyway? But then he wouldn't be so stoic, he was usually more cheered up when that happened. He probably liked her or something, maybe I could help set them up. I'd need to figure out her name first of course. And, could be she was just as bad mom's boyfriends had been.

"Sely?" He repeated. I had absolutely no idea who he meant.

"I dunno? Mom?"

"No Sely, the call wasn't from your mother, although, if she wasn't so busy recuperating, I would have a talk with her about it. The call was from one of your teachers."

Why would my teachers be calling dad? I hadn't even had any tests yet, no report cards at all.

"Do you know why Mrs brooks called me, Sely?"

"…No? I haven't done anything in class."

"Well, yes, that's part of the problem Sely." He looked at me, I wasn't quite sure hwo he felt, but it seemed like he was trying to control himself. "She said you weren't really paying a lot of attention in class, and that you haven't turned in any of your homework yet."

Oh… homework… They actually cared about that? Mom never did, or at least, not most of them time. Not unless some random guy thought it was important all of a sudden. Oh well, I'd only need to wait until she got a new guy.

Although… I was living with my dad now. If he cared about homework… He probably wasn't going to change.

Shit.

He put a hand on my shoulder.

"It's… Sely, I'm not angry with you. I know it's been hard for you the last couple of weeks. I know I won't be able to replace your mother, and that it can be really difficult to find friends in a new city, but…" He stopped for a second.

He was going to be so fucking angry… but… why was he putting in hand on my shoulder, what was he going to?

"I know you're smart Sely, but that just isn't always enough. You need to apply yourself, okay?"

What was he going to do? He'd been nice so far, but… I couldn't help but notice he had a lot of muscles…

"Sely, look at me."

I looked at him, and we locked eyes. He moved his arm towards my back, and pressed me forward against him in some sort of awkward hug.

This was new.

"I… I'm sorry, but…"

"Hush hush now sweety." He patted my back a few times… He wasn't very good at this, but I guess it was the idea that counted…

"I've already talked with her about it. You won't have to turn in the stuff you missed, but you will have to be better from now on okay? And I can help you if you're having a hard time."

"But… It's so boring, and annoying and…" ff'n homework… every day… This was going to suck so hard. It was stupid and…

"Look, Sely, I don't like this either but it's just something you'll have to do. So from now on, every day, after dinner, you're not doing anything else until your homework is done. Understood?"

This was… that was just so draconian, it was just unfair… basically slavery, but just for under 18's.

He continued on: "look, I'll go get some of the Chinese stuff you like, you work on your homework while I'm on the way, and we can watch another movie together once you're done."

"What movie?" I replied… maybe something good would come from this.

"It's a Japanese one from Earth Aleph, it's called Ghost in the Shell"

"Daaad… you know I don't like scary movies."

It wasn't that I scared easily, it just…. I'd had enough of the monster stuff for a while.

"Not that kind of Ghosts you silly, now, you get of the couch and get started on your homework. I have my next shift tonight, and I'd like to catch a few hours of sleep before that."

"Don't have any homework today."

"I happen to know you have algebra on the menu tonight" he replied.

Well, it'd been worth a try.

*** Rachel ***

Another empty bag. She'd have to get more stuff. Judas was getting too thin for her likes. He didn't like the dry food she'd gotten last time, and she was all out of meat.

There was still some cereal, and some of the milk that didn't go bad outside of the fridge, but that wouldn't do for him.

Brutus was eating happily, getting a bit fat maybe. He needed more exercise, she knew, but that didn't work normally. If she went out, people might see. They'd scream, more people would come, and the dogs would need to become bigger. That helped tire them out, but it didn't help them lose weight.

She felt her stomach rumble. The dogs were happy, fed, so it was time for her to eat. She walked to the other side of the empty room, where she'd stored the food.

The bread had gotten a bit moldy, but it was probably still good. Then again, she didn't want to spend all day being sick again, she needed to get food for the dogs.

Judas nuzzled against her legs. Interested in what she was looking at.

"Bread's gone bad Judas." She replied.

He wouldn't understand, she knew. Judas didn't know what bread was, but he was a smart dog. The tone, combined with Judas's name and the word bad. The dog jumped up and licked at her face.

"Sit Judas, sit."

He sat down again, and Rachel smiled. "Good boy".

She checked through her stash. The cookies, the good ones with chocolate, they'd gone bad too. That had been unexpected. She kept them on an old shelf up high. She trusted Judas and Brutus not to take her food, but if she got sick, or hurt, she didn't want them to eat chocolate by accident.

Maybe something to drink then? She looked at the stack of jugs containing milk, water, some soda. Most of them were nearly empty, and the floor beneath them was wet and damp. At least one of them had been leaking. Had that caused the mold? She vaguely remembered something about keeping food dry, but it had been a while ago. Back with that woman. The one that had tried to kill Rollo. Do this, do that, or else.

She'd need to go out again, tonight. Get more food, for the dogs and for her. Maybe some other stuff, one of those magazines with the pictures. Longingly, she looked at the small tv. It didn't work anymore, just like the lights.

Outside. Into the city. Suburbs, really, but still. There'd be people, even if she went late at night. People would panic, call the police even if she asked them not to. There's be sirens, maybe even a cape. Or worse, the other guys. Peeartea.

When she'd first gone to this city, before the winter, it'd been chaos. People attacked, lots of different people. She'd fought them off, but there were so many. Eventually, she'd figured it out. The stuff on the walls, they were markings for territory. Not markings you could smell, but ones to see.

Eventually, when she'd moved here, it'd calmed down. People stopped hunting her, there'd be cops, but they wouldn't chase her if she was quick enough. Even the foam-people stopped, capes tended to leave her alone.

There was that one girl, the blonde, about a month ago. She hadn't come back.

It was good, that they knew this was her territory. Meant she didn't have to kill, to hurt.

Except those other guys. The ones with the weird guns. They'd come after her, every now and then. Sometimes they brought food. That food, she'd thrown away. Probably poisoned.

If she went out, those people would be there again. Trying to trap her with food. She wasn't stupid, she didn't fall for traps like that.

If only they left her alone.

She walked over to Brutus, Judas following behind her. The dog had finished his bowl, and was looking longingly at Judas's.

Petting him, she activated her power, targeting both dogs. Slowly, but steadily, they started growing. Eventually, when they were both about the size of a motorcycle, she went to grab her bags, a construction of several sturdy shopping bags bound together went around Brutus's torso, hanging loosely off of him. It looked silly, but it worked, and Brutus didn't mind.

Judas, she mounted. He made a small noise, a short, happy bark. They were going out for a run, a real run, not a walk. She motioned with her legs, but Judas already knew what to do before she did so. He walked towards the door, where Rachel could open the chain keeping the big double door shut from the inside, a big lock she'd taken from some cyclist who'd dropped his bike and ran when he saw her.

"Store" was all she needed to say after she'd opened the door. They knew the way, and they flew forwards. Here, the roads were empty, it was too late and too desolate for people to run around. There'd been a few druggies, before. Not anymore.

After a minute, they passed a car on the street. Brutus dodged it, moving to the side, but not Judas. Judas decided to jump it, flying upwards with a massive jump.

The wind through her hair, Rachel, or Bitch, felt alive, free.

Until the car skidded to a halt behind her, slowly crashing into a tree.

Annoying. Her dogs were good enough to dodge cars, the person driving it was the only one to blame. But, they'd blame her. Probably.

Stupid. People were just so stupid.

And she'd have to hurry. Be at the store, and be back, before the sirens. Fighting cops again would… be a bother.

Another minute, and she saw the store, but Brutus, who had been in front, saw it first.

The glass at the front was followed by a metal curtain, but that dind't stop Brutus, who simply charged through, relying on his strength. The barrier wasn't very strong.

She jumped off of Judas, who went through the hole Brutus had made, and made her way inside, taking care not to cut herself on the glass or metal. That had happened before. She remembered the wound on her arm, it had gotten infected. After a while, she'd found some pills that had helped with it.

She made her way inside, and saw that Brutus had already made his way to the dog food, relatively close to the entrance. Judas was waiting for her.

"Go" she told him, and he ran towards the meat. Hopefully, he'd fatten himself up a little bit.

Meanwhile, she started loading up Brutus, increasing his bulk to help carry the bags. Once she was done with the dog food, she led him to the fruit. Apples, a watermelon, some banana's, Brutus liked those too.

She noticed that they still hadn't repaired the alarms. They hadn't gone of the last few times.

Good, that meant she didn't have to deal with the noise, and hopefully no-one would disturb her during her shopping trip.

Drinks, now, then chocolate and other snacks. Brutus knew the way, and she walked after him.

While loading Brutus up, however, Judas started barking.

That meant someone was there.

"Judas, here!" She shouted, hearing the dog crash through a stand on his way to her.

But It was taking too long. Judas wasn't usually this slow, and he kept barking. If only she'd thought to bring her flashlight… No, it was empty, she'd need a new one. Or new batteries.

She jumped on Brutus, throwing herself on top of the harness of bags,

"Brutus, Judas, Home." She shouted, something was wrong, she needed to get out of here. They ran for the exit. Brutus, now bigger than before, mauled at the metal again to make a path. She looked outside, there were people there. How? There had been no sirens, and wasn't that…

She looked down, some sort of needle, or dart, or something, had lodged itself in her torso. It didn't really hurt beyond a prick, but it felt weird. Brutus, with her on him, dashed forward. Behind her, she heard a shout, way louder than should be possible, followed by glass shattering.

Something hit Brutus, and her as well. A shock, like touching an electric wire, but worse, coming from above.

She hit the ground, and she heard Judas whining. She tried looking up, see what was happening, but she was too tired to raise her head.

Instead, she decided to dump her power into Brutus, but she was just so tired. It was hard to keep her eyes open. Someone was shooting, and there was a big flash. She stopped hearing Brutus.

Her eyes closed, and the only thing she had ears for was Judas. He'd been howling in pain and fear, aggression, but now… weird, he sounded happy, excited, like puppy. At least one of them was okay then… But Brutus…

She heard footsteps approaching her, but couldn't quite bring up the energy to react, only barely managing to open her eyes. There was light now, quite bright, coming from something at ground level. Headlights or something?

The footsteps stopped behind her, followed by a few seconds of nothing happening. Then, with surprising strength, something picked her up, and held her. She moved her arms, trying to escape, but it didn't take.

"Another dose? She's a bit larger than I expected. " a man said, his footsteps heavy and metallic as he approached… Larger? Was this about Brutus?

"No need, I can handle her, but thank you for offering." The person holding her replied. Her voice seemed… Rachel wasn't sure, she could never really tell. Happy maybe? Probably, happy they'd beaten her, hurt her dogs.

The woman started walking, and Rachel only felt her head get heavier. She wanted to fight, but at the same time… she was just too tired. Even staying awake, trying to struggle, it took everything she had.

Eventually, the woman holding her sat down again, and under the soft hum of an engine, unconsciousness claimed Rachel.


	29. Chapter 5,4

**Gadget 5.4**

Paperwork.

If there was anything Armsmaster hated more than criminals escaping him or someone trying to hurt his daughter it was paperwork.

In a way, he could understand it. The entire purpose of the Protectorate was to have civilian oversight by normal people for professional superheroes. In order to provide that over-sight, their actions needed to be written down.

Thus, paperwork.

Once, a few years ago, he had come up with a better solution. Instead of filling in several stacks of paperwork, he simply taped everything he did and send the tapes to his boss. That way, they could see exactly what happened. He'd even included an automatic transcription of every spoken word, as well as special commentary both in audio and written down, explaining what was happening, something inspired by the way that blind people watched tv and movies.

Of course, the government deemed it too efficient, and Alexandria had told him to get back to the paperwork.

Easy for her to see, as her abilities allowed her to do her paperwork at superhuman velocities.

Thus, it was quite clear that, since they allowed one power in the completion of paperwork, but not another, the PRT, as well as Alexandria, could be rather… What would be the right word? Powerist, powerism? Powerphobic wouldn't fit, it was about inequality, not fear.

But, nonetheless, paperwork still needed doing.

Especially when a member of his team had decided that it would be a great idea to adopt a feral teenage supervillain.

But a planned attack on a supervillain meant a possible danger to civilians, and that meant paperwork.

Then, a successful attack on that supervillain meant even more paperwork.

Not to mention that one of the dogs, the one Gallant had brought into a state of overexcited happy puppy-behaviour, had slobbered all over his armour. Cleaning that had taken quite a while.

He needed more time, but he quite simply didn't have any.

"Dragon?" he said, near silently. The computer still picked it up, and send a quick notification to the Canadian tinker. After a few seconds one of the monitors changed to show her face.

Or rather, her digital avatar. Instead of wearing a mask, Dragon had decided to simply fake all human contact altogether. It didn't really matter to him, but he'd heard some people complain about her not showing her face.

It was weird, because those people would be perfectly okay with a face completely covered by a mask, but that was the kind of weirdness that was normal when you were a cape.

"Good afternoon, or should I say good evening?"

Colin looked at the clock, noting the hour. It was seven already.

"I have some forms here for the Youth Guard and CPS, could you give them a once-over? I'm not quite familiar with them."

"Sure, I'll take a look. This is about that girl, Rachel, right?"

"Yeah…" He answered.

He felt a bit bad about what he'd just done, using his friend like this. He knew Dragon. After she was done helping him with these forms, she'd ask if there was anything else she could help him with. At that point, it wouldn't matter if he told her it wasn't necessary, she would help him anyway,

It might not have been the most heroic thing to do, enlisting her to help him like that, but he needed to get home. Sely always said she could take care of herself, but the last time she ate alone she'd spilled her soup all over herself (luckily it hadn't been too hot) and tried solving the problem by going directly into the shower.

Meaning the cast around her leg had gotten completely drenched.

Meaning a quick trip to the hospital.

It wasn't that she wasn't smart, she was incredibly intelligent when she set her mind to something, their 3-D chess matches were a testament to that, it was just that she tended not to think in the heat of the moment.

"Is something wrong Colin? You look worried."

Sometimes, Dragon could read him like a book. Other times, not so much. Or maybe she did, but pretended not to in order to be polite. She was, after all, Canadian. Still, he was pretty sure she hadn't picked up on his crush.

It was stupid, and he should just come out and tell her, but… What if she didn't really like him? If she wasn't interested in a relationship for one reason or another? Maybe she already had someone else, married in her civilian life. Maybe she was a Lesbian.

If he asked her out and it didn't go well… It would probably turn awkward quickly. He really didn't want to lose this friendship.

"It's… Sely. I don't like leaving her alone the entire evening, you know. She probably thinks I don't have any time for her, that she's a bother…"

"Relax Colin, She's fourteen, she can take care of herself for an evening, and I'm sure she loves you just as much as you love her."

"I… Thanks, but, you haven't even met her and… I'm just worried something will happen to her again while I'm gone."

Dragon's face started moving in some sort of repressed laughter. It seemed natural, but when he thought about it, it was rather strange, that she'd pretend to be unable to fully hide her reaction. There was just so much attention to details like that in her.

"What, you mean like the shower thing? You know no-one got hurt in that right?"

"… You're not wrong…"

"You know what? How about I'll give her a call. I'll check if everything is all right through the webcam and security system, and if need be I'll give her a hand with her homework or something."

He thought about that for a few seconds, what she'd proposed. It was…

Dragon meeting Sely, he just hoped they would hit it off together. If they didn't…

"Just remember, I haven't told her I'm Armsmaster yet." He reminded her. Just barging in and introducing herself as Dragon would be a bit awkward.

"You still haven't told her? Colin…"

Dragon's avatar was scowling, angry at him.

"I know I should, but…" He waited for a few seconds, trying to find the right words to explain his thoughts. It made sense in his head, but explaining it to other people was something else.

"She spend two days fearing for her life through direct contact with parahumans. Someone who was, before that point, known as a hero was responsible for her ending up in the hospital and almost dying. If I tell her I'm a hero too… Would she be able to trust me?"

Dragon answered, faster than he expected. "I guess you have a point… But, don't you think that not telling her also isn't a good way to earn her trust?"

Colin sighed. He'd thought about that before. It had been a difficult choice. Ultimately, he suspected that at least part of the reason h hadn't told her, was because he subconsciously craved that little bit of normalcy in his life. A few hours where he didn't have to be Armsmaster, and could just be a man that watched movies with his daughter.

That meant things, those few hours. Every hour he didn't train, didn't built, it was an hour he didn't become better. Another hour in which Dauntless was catching up to him.

And maybe he could live with that, if it meant waking up in the morning to find his daughter hugging him in her sleep. It wasn't necessarily a good thing, that she sometimes couldn't sleep because of the nightmares, but it had its benefits.

"… I guess I'll just wait a few more weeks, until she's properly settled in here. Maybe Argenta can help her deal with parahumans a bit better."

"Okay Collin, I'll think of something to hide my identity." Dragon replied, before the screen went black.

Now, to finish all this paperwork.

*** Gadget ***

Once again, the stupid German told me her friends were immortal. I laughed, my lightning-gun would decide that. Looking around, I decided to for their mover, freshly back into the fight. She teleported twice in quick succession, but a quick boost from my weird jet-pack thing brought me to the other side of the building just when she turned the corner.

I zapped her, she would be down for at least twelve seconds. Now, to take down that ninja… Where was that little bastard, somewhere near our robot probably…

The phone started ringing

Not my phone, mind you. I had my phone turned off. Were I to turn it on, the only thing that could happen was someone stopping me from smacking people into bottomless pits.

No, it was the landline that was ringing.

That could probably wait until the end of the round, right?

I mean, who would call?

Emma? No, she'd send me a message on one of the fifty different social media thingamajigs she was a member of.

Someone from back in Westlake? No, they wouldn't have the number.

Unless it was mom. I really didn't feel like talking to mom. Not after what she'd done the last time we visited.

Dad had said I shouldn't take it personally, that she had brain-damage. But I was pretty sure it was the moving around part of her brain that had gotten damaged. Not the thinking part.

One of my classmates here then? No, they'd have my mobile number, not the home one.

A teacher? No, teachers wouldn't call me. And anyway, they'd call my dad on his phone like they'd done before.

Ah, there was the ninja, hidden in the little building, he probably needed a health-pack. I jumped in, ready to zap him with my tinker tech tesla… gun? Coil? Was there any applicable word that started with a T? Trinket maybe, but those were generally small. A tool then? Yes, I zapped him with my tinker tech tesla tool. Then, for good measure, I ate peanut butter on his corpse.

The phone stopped. It was probably nothing then. Someone calling me to inform me about how we were all doomed or something. Endbringer cults were weird like that, they'd just knock on your door and be all "Hey, we were just wondering if you'd ever heard about the good word of horrible and painful unavoidable death? Could we interest you in our extra-suffering package? Order now and choose which one of them gets to murder you in your sleep"

Leaving out, of course, that it was normal parahumans that were the real terror.

A victory message appeared on the middle of the screen. Followed shortly by a short clip of someone holding their left mouse button down.

The phone rang again…

I left the matchmaking queue, and stood up to go get it. It was probably important if they called twice.

I grabbed the horn. Which was a weird name for it, because phones didn't have horns, hell, they weren't even alive.

Probably weren't even alive, you never knew these days.

Holding it to my ear, I started talking.

"Hello?"

A voice answered, a woman.

"Hello eh"

"My name's not Eh. Why would I be called Eh?"

"I'm not calling you Eh, eh"

"You just…"

"eh?" the voice started laughing. Weird, she hadn't even introduced herself.

The voice continued. "Sorry, I'm Canadian, that's just how we talk eh."

"… Canada isn't real, everyone knows that."

"Really? Why do you think so eh?"

"Well, what sounds more likely to you, that there's a race of people that ice-skates everywhere and rides around on Moose, or Meese, or whatever the plural is, or that Canada isn't real."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I've never really thought about it like that. So, if Canada isn't real, why do so many people pretend it is eh?"

"Because if not, Dragon will eat them."

"I have to say… I'm pretty sure Dragon doesn't eat people eh."

"You're just saying that because you're scared of her, all Canadians are like that."

"Oh? But I thought Canadians weren't real?"

And I got her, she thought she could win, drive me into a corner, but she couldn't, she wasn't smart enough. Sure, I had no idea who she was or why she called, but I'd won.

"And now I have you."

"You… have me? Eh?"

"You forgot to say Eh, therefore, you aren't really Canadian, proving Canada isn't real."

"Well, I guess you're right then Sely."

"… How'd you know my name?"

"Your father told me."

Why would my father tell random women who were supposedly from Canada my name…

Unless… was this the movie girl? Why would movie girl call me instead of my dad? Was she expecting my dad to be home?

No, that was silly, I was pretty sure movie girl also had an office job with the PRT. After all, that's why she talked to dad every day, and then she'd know that he was still at work.

"Dad didn't tell me your name" I replied. If this was movie girl, I'd have to be smooth.

"Really?" She answered, without the Eh, I knew she wasn't really Canadian anyway.

"yup".

She was silent for about half a second, did she not know her own name?

"Well, you can call me Miss Richter."

"Miss huh? So not Missus?"

"I… yes, that is correct."

"So… why are you calling?"

"Just to have a friendly chat with my friend's daughter, eh."

"I don't buy it… Canadians don't call for no reason."

"I thought Canadians didn't extist."

"… Because they're all ghosts?"

"Well then Sely, in that case, I'm going to ask you a question, and if you don't answer me, I'll come and haunt you"

"Like… in my house?"

"yes, I will haunt your house"

"And, like, in my bedroom"

"Yes, I'll hide under your bed, or maybe in your closet"

"What about in my dad's room?"

"…Maybe?"

"So… what's the question?"

"Well, the very important question your father told me to ask you, was whether or not you've done your homework…"

"…Yes…"

The real answer was no. My excuse? This meant she'd haunt my dad's bedroom, I was pretty sure at least.

"Really?"

"Really"

"… Do you want me to haunt you?"

"… No?"

"…."

"…"

After about half a minute, the silence was broken by a sound from my laptop.

A friend request.

"How about we play a few rounds?" The voice on the telephone said.

*** Dragon ***

Dragon's algorithm parsed the email.

She should've expected this, really.

They weren't even technically wrong.

It was still annoying.

Was it really aimbotting if it was part of your code?


	30. Chapter 5,5

**Gadget 5.5**  
Cancer…

Dennis still couldn't believe it. Cancer happened, sure, but cancer was something that happened on TV, not something that happened to your father.

His parents were with each other, crying. His sister, temporarily back from college, was talking to the doctors. Going through treatment options, insurance coverage, payment plans…

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and grabbed it. A message from someone at school, a friend, asking if he wanted to come online and play a game together

How the fuck could people think about things like that when his father was dying.

You went to school, you got a degree, a job, a wife, two children, and then you died because your body betrayed you.

He'd heard the word 'acute' mentioned. He knew what that meant. It meant there wasn't any time, that things were going too fast.

A week ago, his dad had been okay, a week ago, they'd gone to the movies together.

Now the doctors were saying that there probably wasn't enough time for the chemo to kick in.

His dad was going to die, and there was nothing he could do.

A bone marrow transplant…

Some idiot had died because he was too cool to wear a helmet on a motorcycle, and now, his father could live… Maybe…

The operation had started an hour ago, and all he could do was look at that little light above the door.

They weren't allowed to go in there. Wouldn't do to have the family present when it really mattered.

He hoped it would be allright. After all, these were doctors, they'd studied long and hard to do exactly this.

They could help, Dennis couldn't.

But he couldn't help but note that, over the last few minutes, traffic had increased. Several extra doctors were walking into the surgery room.

He heard the door move, and watched. Someone was coming out, some sort of nurse with a tray of used equipment or something. Something medical he couldn't understand.

He listened to what was happening on the other side of the door.

"He's going …. Something something…"

"Something something Cardiac arrest"

"Something something losing him."

He heard his mother start crying.

He heard his sister slump down on her chair, unable to sit upright any longer.

He had to do something…

Dennis ran forward, to the room. The nurse tried to block him, said something he couldn't hear. Or rather, didn't pay attention to.

He shoved her aside. He felt bad for her, as he saw her fall to the ground, but this was his father dammit. There had to be something he could do…

He saw his father, his body opened up, monitors beeping around him, going faster and faster.

One of the doctors, standing to the side, saw him.

"Look kid, I know it's hard, but the best thing you can do for your dad is leave." The man said, walking closer to Dennis.

"But… but… I can help…"

The man looked at him, sadness visible in his eyes. "I'm sorry, but…"

The man held an arm out, blocking his path, just at the moment the monitor started flat-lining.

The doctors were shouting something, grabbing for tools. But they were panicking, dropping stuff. His father, the doctors, they just needed a bit more time.

Invisitext

He catched himself before falling to the ground. Had he stumbled? He was pretty sure he hadn't, but…

The man in front of him, the doctor that wanted him to leave, had caught him. Had he fainted? No, it had been less than a second… but why wasn't the man reacting... why wasn't he moving?

He's locked in time, something told him. He felt it, in his fingertips.

Dennis ran forward, towards his father. Someone else tried to stop him, and he stopped her instead. Then, when he reached his father, he did what he finally could. He bought the man some time. Just a few more minutes for the doctors to solve the problem.

They were sitting in the living room, watching the news. His father… he wasn't healthy, but the man was recovering.

It was the head of surgery that had taken charge, after seeing what Dennis had done. Told him when to freeze, and what to freeze. After they were done, the people in the room had promised to keep it a secret. Dennis wasn't sure if he could believe them, but there was little he could do. He was just happy to have his father back. If that meant people knowing he had suddenly gotten powers, then he could live with that.

The news article was about the local wards team, who had apparently gotten a new recruit. Dennis, and most everyone else in Arcadia, had expected as much, seeing as a load of blonde bombshells had been enrolled in the middle of the school year. A fat lady with an ugly bob cut was talking right now, giving some sort of speech about what being a hero meant. How both parahumans and normal people could both be heroes, how the police, firemen, doctors and teachers were the real heroes of society.

It annoyed him a bit. Wasn't this supposed to be about the new Ward? Was it really a good idea to start a teenage girl's superhero career with a speech about other people?

"I'm guessing she thinks that the real heroes of society are chocolatiers."

His mother groaned, "Dennis…" but his father started laughing, at least until he hurt himself.

Triumph entered the stage, a small bandage around one of his arms, had something happened? He remembered classmates talking about a scuffle up north, something with a convenience store.

"Hello everyone" the leader of the wards began his speech.

"The last couple of months have been hectic. I've inherited a great team from Velocity, and have had nothing but support from the brave heroes I'm now in charge of."

"Now, I am proud to say, that I have been given the honour to bring you all some great news! A new hero has stepped up to join our ranks, sworn to defend the good people of our city. And though the might be young and inexperienced, I have no doubt at all that someday in the future, she will be standing here in my place, announcing the arrival of a new Ward. Ladies and Gentlemen , I am proud to announce, Argenta!"

As he'd suspected, a girl walked onto the stage. Her armour was coloured silver, and shaped like that of a medieval knight, but there were some concessions made on that point. Her chest contained a notable bump, to accommodate her assets, and a metal skirt covered the top half of her legs. The helmet also had a more feminine design, the opening at the front was heart-shaped, with a visor covering her eyes, and her hair came out in a ponytail at the back.

He wasn't quite sure how old she was, given how much of her body was armoured. The girls that had arrived had been spread out in age, the connecting factor being that they all had long blonde hair, were of medium height, and generally had quite a bit in the form of assets. She could be a particularly well-endowed fourteen year old, or she could be seventeen.

His phone buzzed with a message from a friend. "Told you, total bombshell."

*** Argenta ***

"Hello everyone" Emma said. The glare of the cameras being reflected by her visor. They were taking a LOT of pictures. This was amazing.

"I'm Argenta, I like music, cheerleading, ballet…"

She stopped talking. That wasn't right… Those were Emma's interests, she wasn't Emma, she was Argenta, she was a floating armoured badass, not a girl that liked ballet. She had to salvage this situation quickly.

"Cycling, and arresting criminals."

People laughed at that, hopefully, that meant they'd focus less on her earlier stuff. Before this, she'd gone over the event with the PR woman. They'd discussed what to say, how to answer questions. But she couldn't really remember any of that with all those cameras in front of her.

"I can make lightning and I can sort of float and I can move stuff around and turn on the lights and."

Triumph put a hand on her shoulder, and interrupted.

"Come on Argenta, how about we leave some questions for the press to ask."

"I… uhm… sure thing boss. Ehhm, any questions anyone?"

At that, the crowd started with a barrage of questions, to many to really answer. Eventually, after trying once or twice, Emma decided to pick just one. "Can you show your power".

Sure, she could, easy-peasy. She could show them her floating.

Argenta activated her power, electricity flowing from her body, to the lines in the undersuit, into the metal of her armour. From there, tendrils sprang out, some into the air around her, but most of them to the ground. Some of them reached the microphones, which temporarily shorted out, the voltage of her power being far larger than what was usual in a microphone.

People panicked for a second after a feedback look made a loud noise, but she quickly managed to take control of the microphones, dialling her powers back down. They were very different from light-bulbs.

"Ehhm, oops? Sorry, won't happen again." She said, before lifting herself a few feet upwards, into the air.

*** Shadow Stalker***

"Would you look at that Uber, taking down the press at her first outing. A bold move!"

"A bold move indeed Leet, we'll see how that turns out for her in the second half. What do you think, will coach Triumph swap her out for someone else? Or does he trust this young talent's instincts."

"You never know Uber, but you know what they say, To win the game, they'll have to score more points than their enemies"

"That's right indeed Leet, and it's already the third inning, but I think this floating manoeuvre just might earn Argenta a three-pointer."

"Uber…"

"yes Leet?"

"I'm pretty sure that three-pointers are basketball, not soccer."

"Soccer? I thought we were doing baseball?"

"Why would we be doing baseball in our coverage of Argenta's reveal?"

"… To get to second base? "

The two of them kept bickering, as Sophia threw her phone to the floor.

The roof, really, seeing as she was standing on top of a building.

It had been such a good plan. Uber and Leet always live-streamed their villainous antics like a bunch of degenerates. So she'd gotten a subscription, notifying her whenever they went online.

This time, she was in the middle of the city, getting rid of the vermin, when she was notified of an on-going new episode.

Except instead of them being a bunch of pathetic idiots and trying to rob some place with some crazy theme, they'd done commentary on a fucking ward unveiling.

And what a ward at that. A fucking pretty little princess. Argenta was pathetic, the wards were pathetic. Bunch of cowards pretending to be something. They thought having powers meant they could do what she did. They couldn't.

She decided to start running. Find some asshole to take down, someone worthy to protect.

She shifted to her shadow-state, and jumped. Flying through the air, shifting back just as she hit the ground. It felt amazing, the wind blowing right through her, feeding her.

Another jump, and another, and another.

She wasn't in the good part of town anymore. Now, she was in Empire territory.

Nazi's. Pathetic little shits. Cowards. People so utterly useless that the only thing they could latch on to was the colour of their skin.

For a bunch of so-called übermenschen, way too many of them were drug-addled illiterate weaklings.

Sure, the few at the top could be dangerous. She'd heard the stories about Hookwolf, about Krieg, about Night and Fog.

But those were just figureheads.

For all they bragged about having the most capes in the city, most of the empire goons were pathetic little nobodies.

Like the drug dealer below her, standing on his little corner, peddling his fucking wares.

Greedy little fuck couldn't even keep to his own ideology, he sold to people of all races, as long as they had money.

Too bad it was just a fucking peddler. There wouldn't be anyone worthy coming to him, there wouldn't be anyone to test.

Pathetic little addicts buying from a pathetic little Nazi, that's all there was to it.

But Sophia really needed to fucking punch someone, now that she'd gotten her hopes crushed by Uber and Leet.

She shifted to her shadow-form, and dropped down.

The man was busy selling to someone too drugged up to properly notice her. Sophia shifted back to her normal state, and grabbed her bat.

She swung for the right leg, and heard a satisfying grunt from the Nazi. No cracking noise, too bad.

The addict that was buying from the man ran for it. She wondered if she should shoot him.

Probably wasn't worth the ammo, the guy would end up dead in a ditch sooner or later anyway. That was what this city did to addicts. The ditch, or the Merchants, and you didn't get to join the Merchants if you bought from Nazis.

The Nazi went for his side, a gun, probably.

Didn't matter, as her fist just hit him square in the nose, quickly followed up by two more strikes. One in the eye, the other on the lips. Blood seeped out of the man's mouth. Good.

Somehow, he'd managed to stay standing, and get a hold on a gun. The man shot, One, two, three times. All too late. Shadow Stalker had gone dark, and pushed herself through the man, giving him a kick in the kidney for his efforts. The man groaned, so she dropped again, striking for the legs with her bat. This time, he fell to the ground.

"Kapher pfwhill fwhucking mur-" His attempted threat stopped when she kicked him in the sides again.

Empty threats, Kaiser was too pathetic to face her in battle, hiding behind his little Nazi soldiers.

If she remembered the history lesson right, Hitler had killed himself, maybe Kaiser would do so too, like the coward he was.

She waited a few seconds, kicking when the little shit on the floor tried to move. When he'd gotten the point, she started searching him. White powders, pills, other things like that.

She took them, as well as the money in the man's wallet.

And his license, his credit card, things like that. Every day the man stood in line at the DMV was a day the city was freed of his patheticness.

She looked around at the empty streets. The junk wouldn't have called, and there was no-one else around.

She grabbed her phone.

Grabbed at the place where her phone should be.

FUCK, it was still on the roof, way back.

Uber and Leet fucking ruined every fucking thing.

By the time she'd gotten there, the degenerate under her boots would be standing again, or have friends or something.

Use his phone then.

She grabbed it, it wasn't secured.

Too bad, meant she didn't have an excuse to hit the guy again.

She called.

"911, what is your emergency?" A chipper voice said, someone was having a good mood.

"I've got some fucking Nazi here, was selling drugs to hobo's."

The line was silent for a few seconds.

"Shadow Stalker, you know you're supposed to call the PRT line for this."

This shit again. Fuck Dauntless and his fucking "here's a private number so we know it's fucking you" bullshit.

They probably wouldn't even arrest this fucker, that's how fucking useless they were.

It was supposed to be simple, she beat them up, and they put them in jail.

And then fucking Dauntless drops down from the sky because some pathetic little degenerate had a concussion. Seriously, who gave a fuck about Nazi's and other bangers?

"Fuck the fucking PRT you grabbing this guy or not, s'near Browning Street and Hyde street."

She threw the phone away, and grabbed the thug's belt, twisting his arms and legs together and tying them up. She really should've gotten some fucking zip ties or something.

Then, she left, walking under a nearby fire escape, jumping, shifting, and shifting back once she was up a floor. A couple of repeats and she was on the roof again.

Now to get back to her fucking phone again. Fucking Uber and Leet going soft like a bunch of whiny little babies.

Why was everyone around her so utterly pathetic?

*** Gadget ***

I'd promised Emma I'd watch.

I hadn't promised her I'd watch on the news.

No, instead, I'd been watching Uber and Leet's live commentary.

It was saddening really. Them parodying anything other than video-games. Without even breaking any laws. They didn't even know half the sports they were parodying. Everyone knew that Soccer worked with Innings, not rounds. Probably.

But, it had given me inspiration.

I now knew what to do with my audio-jack.

I'd call them out on this shit.

The internet was filled with clips of the duo. All I had to do, was clean up the sound, cut out specific words and paste them together in new sentences, and voila, no-one would ever be able to take them seriously again.

Plus, everyone in school would hear it, so they wouldn't be able to take school seriously either.

Which meant less homework? Dad couldn't ask her to do homework for a school that randomly got its communication system hijacked by Uber and Leet, right?

And if not, well, it would still be really funny.

Almost as funny as moving all the frogs for Biology class to the locker rooms.

I hadn't expected the boys to actually be louder than the girls.

I grabbed my phone and send a message. "gratz on it being official. Having fun?"

It took a few minutes, but I got a return message "Yes have fun need2goonpatrol"

That was right, she'd have to go on patrol now.

I just couldn't believe it, miss pipsqueak mcsparkypants keeping the peace as a hero.

Sure, the official name was Argenta, but sparkypants just sounded so much better.

Even though she had a skirt.

Even though she hated the name sparkypants for some reason.

Especially because she hated to the name sparkypants.

I wondered what kind of hero she'd be. I… hadn't really looked up what kind of heroes Brockton Bay had. I knew there was healerchick, who was in some sort of new-age music group or something called new-wave. I also knew there was attention-girl, mostly because all the guys kept looking at her during lunch. She was… captivating.

Then of course, there had been Armsmaster and Assault. Everyone knew Armsmaster, and Emma wouldn't shut up about Assault in her messages, so those two I knew.

Then there was gun-girl, who's superpower was guns. Sort of similar to mine, but she only had one gun at the same time. Also she wasn't a Tinker, probably.

Then there was Greek dude, some sort of puppy-based heroine, at least that's what Emma Said Assault said, someone who was really fast.

And then in the wards, you had Emma, you had Vista, whom I was pretty sure was the girl I'd drank coffee with, and a whole lot of dudes that I only really knew through Emma's description.

There was Beefcake, who had the power of shouting. I think that was the guy that was the leader, Triumph.

There was space-Bieber, who was apparently already taken.

There was back-up beefcake, who had that name because he was beefcake for when beefcake wasn't around, and because his body was one big massive back-up.

And then there was Nerd. For some reason Emma didn't want to talk about Nerd, even though he had laserguns and everything.

Sure, his laserguns didn't make the "pew-pew" sounds that a proper gun should, but it was still cool.

Except, of course, when you were Emma and you thought it was icky.

I wondered who she'd be patrolling with. Probably beefcake, if he was the leader and it'd be her first patrol.

Maybe I should go find her and annoy her while she was in costume… that could be fun.

Or I could try to get some work done on designing my hookshot. It sucked, not having two working arms while building, but it did mean I had the time to draw up plans.

Even if those plans were mostly just action-pictures instead of technical designs.

Focussing on one project without even building it was almost as hard as doing homework every single evening.

It'd been fun, skipping it to play games, but having to catch up at night before dad figured it out sucked.

And it's not like It mattered, my grades probably still sucked anyway.


	31. Chapter 5,6

**Gadget 5.6**  
She threw another punch at the stupid idiot in front of her, but the woman caught her fist. Just like the last ten times.

"I know you're angry, but you have to understand, violence isn't going to do anything here." The woman said.

She was lying, trying to get her to give up.

Rachel threw another punch, this time aiming at the stomach. Again, the woman was faster than her.

It wasn't fair. She'd just sit perfectly still until the last moment, when Rachel's punches were blocked.

"Where's Brutus!"

If only Brutus or Judas were here, they'd show this bitch not to mess with her.

"As I said before Rachel, Brutus is upstairs in the yard."

Rachel sank to the floor. "Lemme go…"

Couldn't that annoying woman just kill her and get it over with already…

"Rachel… We can go see Brutus and Judas, but you're going to have to calm down first."

Rachel rose again, throwing herself against the woman in anger. "Liar! Let me GO!"

Again, the woman resisted her without a sweat.

"Rachel, look at me." The woman said. One of her hands moving towards the back of Rachel's head, turning it so she had to look the woman in the eyes.

The woman spoke again.

"Rachel, I promise you, I will never, ever, lie to you, okay?"

The woman let her go, and Rachel stumbled back, sitting down on the small bed in the middle of the room. Not knowing what to do, she looked through the small window. All she could see through the thick glass was the cloud=covered night sky. How long had she been here? It had been morning when she'd awoken here, with the woman in front of her.

Jessica, that's how she'd introduced herself. Rachel wasn't sure what this woman, this Jessica, wanted from her. She just kept saying the same few things, and she kept being so much faster and stronger than Rachel. She'd never make it out, never find Brutus and Judas again.

She turned over and lay down on her side. It was all useless.

Time went by, Rachel wasn't sure how long, until the woman spoke again.

"See? I told you you could calm down Rachel."

The woman was lying again, she knew the type, promises and lies, all of them.

A hand touched hers, and Rachel was about to panick again.

"It's allright Rachel, we're just going to go see Brutus and Judas."

Rachel didn't really react as the woman led her out of the room, through a maze of corridors. She wasn't sure what was about to happen, but she'd decided that there was nothing she could do anyway.

After two sets of stairs, they entered a small inner courtyard. Rachel looked around, was this where they were going to get rid of her?

Then she saw Brutus, walking towards her, slowly. He was absolutely exhausted. Like he'd been running all day.

"No using your power right now Rachel." The woman said. Rachel didn't even notice, she knelt down and embraced Brutus, who had started licking her face. Not entirely how she'd trained him, but it didn't really matter right now.

She looked around, trying to find Judas.

She saw him in a corner, lying on top of a girl in some weird green-white costume, a chewed up tennis ball lying to the side of them.

"Now Rachel, how about we both go catch some shut-eye? I think Brutus and Judas have had a very exhausting day."

Rachel didn't really care what the woman was saying, all that mattered was that her dogs were safe.

*** Gadget ***

Someone was whispering, someone I didn't know.

Probably robbers, here to steal my stuff.

Or not, given that I just heard my dad whisper as well.

Why was I hearing him whisper.

Oh, of course, because I'd fallen asleep on the couch.

I opened my eyes, someone, probably dad, had thrown a blanket over me. Looking further, I saw the TV shut down, and several people sitting at the dining table, playing some sort of card game.

"Just got a message from Jess, looks like she's finally gone to sleep." A woman said. She didn't sound like Miss Richter, so I wondered what she was doing here.

"Well, you gotta give it to the girl, she's got stamina." Someone else replied. I couldn't quite make out who said what.

"I just hope it won't be all for nothing." The woman replied.

I rubbed at my eyes, trying to get a better look at them. There were three people, one of them my dad.

"Looks like someone woke up." dad said.

"Mornin" I replied. I took a better look at the two strangers. The woman looked vaguely foreign, kinda sorta middle-eastish in looks, but very much American in dress. The guy was young, maybe like twenty or something. He seemed like an average sort of guy, the sort of person you'd find in the background of pictures somewhere.

I moved myself until I sat up-right. Dad stood up and walked towards me, scratching the top of my head a little. "Do you want me to carry you to bed, or are you joining us for a round?"

I thought about it for a second. No, far less than a second. If this woman was a rival for miss Richter, I'd need to figure out her weak points. "I'll join."

Dad helped me stand up. I didn't need it, but it sure helped. I sat down opposite the woman, the better to keep my eye on her. Dad sat down next to me.

"Hi, I'm Hannah." She said. I already disliked her name.

"Robin." The guy said. He seemed okay, even if it was sort of a girl's name.

"Sely" I answered.

"How about a game of Hearts?" Hannah asked.

Hearts huh… Hearts would work.

This was frustrating. This was very, very frustrating. It seemed like, every time I'd tried something, she KNEW. She didn't say anything about it, but I could see it in her eyes.

The worst part? She was so damn good. It was like she remembered exactly who had played which cards.

And dad hadn't noticed a thing, he was talking about some sort of office politics with Robin. Something about a girl called Jessica overworking herself, and some other guy smoking pot or something, followed by a discussion about the new intern, who, apparently, had an electrifying personality.

"You're pretty good at this" Hannah said, a stupid smirk upon her stupid face.

I didn't reply. Mostly because I wasn't quite sure what to say.

"Is something wrong?" she continued.

"mm tired,,,"

She looked at her watch. "That late already? We should probably get going.

"Before we go, didn't you have a present in the car, Colin?"

Dad thought about it for a second, then nodded. "Sely, how about you brush your teeth and get into bed, and I'll see out my friends and bring you your present.

"Sure dad."

Robin held out his hand, "Nice meeting you Sely."

I shook it, "same…"

Hannah instead decided to rub her knuckles over my head and mess up my hair. "I'll make sure your dad keeps his eyes on you, little rascal." The content of the words didn't match the smile on her face.

I stuck out my tongue and went upstairs.

A few minutes after I'd put on my pajama's, dad knocked on the door.

"Come in". I answered.

He entered, with a big taped up cardboard box in his hands.

He gestured to the bed. "You wanna sit down and tell me what that stuff with Hannah was all about?

…. So he'd noticed…

I sat down on my bed, and dad took a seat right next to me, putting an arm around my shoulder.

"She's stupid."

Dad sighed. "Can you explain why she's stupid Sely? Because she's an important colleague of mine, and if you don't like her, I'd like to know why."

I wondered what to do. It wasn't like I could tell him all the reasons. At least not the most important one.

"She just keeps remembering all the cards like a tryhard, and her voice is stupid, and her opinions are stupid, and she's got a gun which is stupid."

I didn't tell him what exactly was stupid about the gun. I still wasn't quite sure what it was. It had felt weird, like something bigger than it actually was or something.

"So you noticed about the gun…" Dad sounded worried.

"yeah…"

"She… has her reasons for always having it with her. Always and everywhere."

"Even in the shower?"

Dad chuckled at that. "Well, I haven't checked, but I presume so."

Good, that meant he hadn't seen her naked yet.

"Dad?"

"Yes sweety?"

"Do you want to see her in the shower?"

"That's… well… a little inappro-"

"Because if you want to see anyone in the shower I think it should be Miss Richter!"

There. I'd actually said it…

Shit… dad would hate me now… Miss Richter would probably also hate me…

I dun goofed.

Dad hugged me closer to him, and I looked up at his face, it was red in anger… No, not anger, shame? Embarrassment?

"Well, that would be something now wouldn't it Sely…" he said.

"So… what are you waiting for?"

"Waiting to do what? I'm afraid I don't follow."

"Seeing her in the shower… duh…"

Dad laughed again, a smirk on his face. This was good, I could remember this, bring it out whenever I wanted.

"Well, it's… not that easy really. I mean… I don't think she even likes me…"

"Dad."

"Yes?"

"How do you even know she doesn't like you if you haven't even asked?"

"Well. I guess."

"Dad… I promised to do my homework, so you gotta promise me you'll ask her out the next time you see her."

"… Fine…"

"gotta hear that clearly dad."

"Fine. Sely, I promise that the next time I see her I'll ask her out."

"… I want that on paper."

"You're pushing it now."

He hugged me again, and grabbed the box he'd been carrying.

"So, about your present. It's not actually mine, but from someone else, and, it's been looked over by several people, but it's finally been cleared."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh."

"Can you guess who made it for you?"

"… How can I guess when I don't know what it is dad?"

"Fair point." He handed me the box, and I tore it open. There were several layers of packaging, some air-tight, that I had to tear through, but after a minute or two I had it in my hands.

It was big, absolutely massive, roughly twice as long as my body, and half a meter wide, but the fabric was very thin, covered in a white-blue pattern of spirals and circles, sort of like a bubble chamber, with blue lines covering the white field. It was much bigger than my old scarf had been.

Given the colour scheme, and the weird material, I immediately knew who had made this thing.

"What'd Paige make it from?"

"It's rather interesting actually, it's some sort of mixture of silk and carbon nano-tubes, or at least analogous to it, that's what makes it so strong even though it's so thin."

"sweeeet. I'm gonna send her another letter."

Before I could stand up, dad stopped me.

"No, you're going to go to sleep. You can write your letter tomorrow."

*** Argenta ***

"So then, when he tried to run away, I was all like no you won't, and then I zapped him and he fell flat on his face and started screaming and shouting at me because I was so angry"

"Really? From one zapping?"

"Yup, so you know what I did?"

"… You asked him if he spoke to his mother with that mouth?"

"Nope, I dropped down and smacked my big blue monkeyballs in his face."

Emma almost had a spit-take at that. Leave it to Sely to describe a video-game in such detail in the middle of lunch.

"So, how did your game go last night?" she asked, suggestively. They both knew they weren't talking about a game here, but no-one else in the cafeteria could know. Except for Rory, or Carlos, or Dean, or Chris. Not Missy though, she was still in Middle School.

"It was amazing, we beat like three people together."

"Who were you playing with?"

"This guy that kept shouting over the microphone."

"He shout at any enemies?"

"Not really, most just surrendered when they saw us, I did get to grab one though."

"Did you zap him?"

"I… no, that's dangerous."

"Not even a little?" Sely sounded dejected.

"No… I don't want to, you know…"

"Oh yeah… sorry, I guess."

They sat together for a bit, eating. After a minute, Sely'd started a conversation with someone else about the upcoming art class. Art class was one of the only classes Emma shared with Sely. She'd been here, at this school, for two weeks now, and Rory had said that it'd probably be safe to start hanging out with the others, as long as she didn't make it too obvious, so they'd be able to hang out during art class this afternoon.

Problem was, Chris was also in art-class, and he'd probably ruin everything by being such a nerd.

Emma looked around the cafeteria, the groups of people hanging around. There were some cliques at Arcadia high, although there weren't as many as you'd expect. First of all, there were the cheerleaders. She'd looked into joining, but it turned out that the Arcadia cheer team was very competitive, and what with her job as a superhero, she simply wouldn't have enough time for all the training. What was weird was that none of the girls that had been brought in as 'decoys' had joined up either. Maybe they were afraid that, if they joined, people would actually believe that they were Argenta.

There were also the Jocks, a loose collection of hunky assholes. Once, Emma would have loved to hang out with them. Big guys, lots of muscles, exactly the kind of thing she was sort of interested in.

Nowadays, she had a bit more perspective. Sure, big hunky beefcake that was good at throwing a ball around was fun, but it failed completely in comparison to beefcake that punches criminals. They quite simply couldn't compete.

Then there were the nerds. Strangely enough a group that Chris wasn't a part of. Most of them played computer games, loved math, that sort of stuff, but there was one overarching factor.

Where back in Westlake they'd been mild, here they were absolutely massively into capes.

Armsmaster shoes, Dauntless pants, Alexandria T-shirts, Myrddin wizard hats, 'Dragon-Approved' Laptops and smartphones, they were obsessed to a dangerous degree with all things cape.

Quite a few of them were already preparing a costume for the upcoming cape-con in Boston. Upcoming meaning, of course, a couple of months from now, in the middle of the summer vacation.

She really didn't want to see any guys dressed up as her, that would just be wrong.

She looked back at her table when she noticed someone new talking to Sely. A someone new who was quite definitely Dean's girlfriend Glory Girl. They hadn't met yet, but Dean talked about her a lot. He was kind of whipped.

"So, what's it made from" Victoria asked, holding one end of Sely's new scarf. It was good, seeing her with one again, Sely wasn't Sely without an overly massive scarf hanging around her neck.

"Some sorta weird magic spidertube shit."

Victoria took half a step back, her aura flaring up just a bit "Spiders? Ew?"

"What? You never see anyone wear silk?"

"I… Guess you're right? Where'd you get it?"

Emma looked at Sely, she… wasn't taking the interrogation very well.

She could understand why. Brutes could be scary, and Sely was still wearing casts from the last one.

She decided to stand up and interfere, be more assertive. Standing next to Sely, she started talking.

"We got it from this new exclusive boutique called Nonya."

"Oh, Nonya? Didn't know they did scarfs, guessing it was a costum design?" Glory Girl answered.

And it had been such a good set-up too. All Victoria would've said was something along the lines of 'What's a Nonya', and she'd be able to counter with 'Nonya Business!' It had sounded so cool in her head!

"Yeah, one of a kind, can't get anything like this, it's too exclusive."

Sely turned around and looked at Emma with her mouth half open, but before she could say anything, Victoria counterattacked.

"Well, what I'm wearing right now is a design by Parian! She's a both a cape AND a fashion designer you know, she made this with her power, can't get more exclusive than that!"

Parian, Emma had heard about her. Still, Sely's scarf was even more exclusive, the materials having been made by a power, but she probably didn't want that information just thrown around. She'd need another venue for a counter-attack.

"What? Parian, the fashion designer whose work is so shit she's afraid to show her own face?"

At that, the aura flared up even higher, and through the supernatural fear, Emma knew that she'd just won.

She'd still have to deal with the angry mask-less superhero in front of her though.

"Riiiiiiing"

Wowzers, talk about saved by the bell.

Emma was about to say something snappy about it, but saw that Victoria was already marching off.

*** Kid Win ***

Argenta was pretty.

No, that wasn't it, Argenta wasn't just pretty, Argenta was beautiful. Absolutely everything about her was perfect. Her hair, her face, her body. On her very first patrol, she'd taken out three gangbangers with Triumph, she was already a better hero than he was.

That was why it was getting really hard to concentrate on this art assignment, a four-person thing where everyone was only allowed to use a single colour. Miss Henderson had the silliest assignments.

In his group? Argenta, or Emma out of costume, a fat black kid called Blake, and a friend of Emma's with a massive scarf and two broken bones called Sely.

When he'd first me the girl, he'd thought he knew her from something, but he wasn't sure what.

About five minutes in, she'd complained she had to go to the bathroom, and had left them to do the project with three people.

Emma, nice as she was, was afraid of getting herself dirty with the paint.

And Blake just had absolutely no artistic talent.

In short, their reproduction of the Mona Lisa was looking very very much like a Smurf, since the only colour he had to work with was blue.

After about fifteen minutes, Sely returned to class. The teacher asked why it had taken her so long, and she could only point at the crutch and the cast on her arm.

Sely was surprisingly good at painting with one working arm though. And the Red portions of the painting were also coming along nicely.

Yellow and Green were still almost completely absent, except for a few dots on Emma's nose. She made everything look beautiful.

Then, the intercom system went off.

"Hello everyone, and welcome to the Uber and Leet show!"


	32. Chapter 5,7

**Gadget 5.7**  
This was utterly amazing.

Everyone was listening, and no-one had any idea I had done this. They didn't even know it was a false alarm.

"And today, we will be playing Bully" my synthesized version of Leet's voice thundered over the speakers.

"Or, for our overseas watchers, Canis Canem Edit" Uber continued.

It had taken some work to find something applicable to high-school, but this one would probably work.

"So, the question on all your minds is, what will this involve?"

I looked around the class, the reactions were… not entirely as I suspected. People weren't panicking as much as I expected. It was like they weren't afraid of this pair of dangerous criminals.

In retrospect, why would they be. This was Arcadia, populated by the Brockton Bay Wards, as well as having its very own private flying tank.

But that was okay, the mayhem wouldn't be caused by a pair of super-villains. The mayhem would be caused by a pair of superheroes desperately trying to find the super-villains.

"It's very simple, we'll be playing the bully, and your brave heroes will be trying to stop us." Leet's voice said.

"They will also, of course, Fail." Uber said.

"Everyone, stay calm, everything will be allright." The teacher said.

He was right, of course, but the rest of the students didn't believe him. They'd started panicking.

Several people ran for the door, Chris and Blake amongst them. Emma stayed nearby.

"Emma, I can take care of myself, go gettem." I whispered to her. It was a nice gesture, really, but I didn't need it. Partly because I had my own powers, partly because there wasn't any danger.

"Okay…" she said.

A few seconds after she left, the speakers turned on again.

"Like all gamers, we know that a competitive game needs to be fair and balanced, and that Uber needs to be hit with a nerfhammer." Leet's voice spoke out.

"Therefore, we have several hints for the white hats." Uber's voice completed the sentence.

"So, first hint: The princess is not in the principal's office, and we're doing a feminist reinterpretation." Leet's voice said.

To be fair, I myself had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but it sounded like the sort of thing that tinfoils on PHO would go crazy about.

The teacher, in the meantime, had finally gotten control over the class back. About half of us were still in the room.

"It's alright kids, just don't do anything stupid and we'll be all-right. Just stay inside, I'll barricade the door and we'll turn of the lights."

*** Shadow Stalker ***

Gladly droned on and on and on. Congress this, politics that, international blablabla. It was all so fucking stupid, who even gave a shit. It wasn't even like democracy meant anything, it was all corrupt anyway.

And who the fuck needed political power? Was the present somehow immune to endbringers? No he wasn't. If someone like Heartbreaker wanted, he'd have all the power instead.

It was all some pathetic little popularity contest for idiots without any real power.

"Hey, Sophia?" Madison whispered.

Sophia looked at the little toadie. A spineless little idiot. But Emma liked her, and she was useful, she knew how to follow orders.

"What?"

"You see this?" she snuck her phone over, in full sight of Gladly. Usually, that'd be bad, but Gladly was a fucking idiot without a spine, how he'd gotten a place as a teacher, Sophia had no idea.

Sophia looked at the phone, the screen showed a twitter feed, a student from Arcadia talking about something.

" Uber&Leet at #ArcadiaHigh. Just barely made it out. #Traumatized"

Those fucking cowards, they were too afraid to fight her so they chose a different school. Utterly pathetic.

"How ridiculous." She said to Madison, handing the phone back.

"Yeah, too bad they didn't come here; they could take down Taylor then."

Taylor Hebert, the personification of everything that was wrong with the world. Crying at a hat's drop, too weak to stand up for herself, to stand up for anything, event too weak to ask anyone for help. Sophia still couldn't believe that Emma had once been friends with the girl.

Not that Emma didn't have her problems, she could be vapid and shallow, but at least she tried to be better, she had a bite. And in a place like school, where beating people up would be a bad idea, having her around to keep the idiots down was useful.

Sophia held her hand up, trying to catch Gladly's attention.

"Yes, Sophia?"

"Mr G. I have, you know… Can I go to the nurse?"

"Sure thing Sophia, just ask a friend about the homework for next week."

"Thanks Mr G."

Sophia waved to Madison, and gave a small kick to Taylor's backpack when passing by her seat. She wouldn't even try complaining, the spineless dolt. Even someone like Greg would protest when pushed far enough.

She turned around the corner, to a lesser used hallway, looking around for people, she shifted her way through the door leading to the fire escape. From there, she jumped upwards in her shadow-form. Now to get her stuff, hidden in the little structure that allowed for access to the roof, between two walls. Putting on her gear, she send a quick message to Emma. "Going to check out things Arcadia, can you cover during math?"

She didn't even wait for the answer, Emma was reliable enough for this type of shit. Now, to make her way towards Arcadia and take down Uber and Leet, hopefully before the Wards were crying about their boo-boos and shit, probably followed by Armsmaster and fucking Dauntless.

She jumped, savouring the rush of the wind moving through her body. It was amazing, exhilarating. It almost made the drudgery and idiocy of the world tolerable.

Almost, but not quite.

*** Uber ***

"Dude…" Uber said.

"What?"Leet replied

"Which game are the clones for?"

"What clones?"

"You know… The ones attacking Arcadia High."

Leet looked at him, shocked. Uber had been miffed that he hadn't been informed, but he could appreciate a good clone/Evil twin plotline. This, though. He spoke again. "So, I'm guessing they're not yours?"

"Yeah... I would've told you. Plus, I'm locked out of most wetware."

That was also true. Hmm, what could it be then. Alternate universe? Unlikely, and cliché. A copycat? Flattering, but copycats usually didn't pretend to be you. This could be bad. Their rep had never been good, but if some idiots got themselves arrested under their names. They would be the laughing-stock of the internet.

"We should go there. Put a stop to this."

"Why" Leet asked. He was a good friend, but he could be such an idiot.

"Because they're messing with our rep."

"So? Most people already hate us anyway."

"It's not that Leet, think of it like that fucking E.T. game. One rotten apple can destroy everything. It could take years to recover if we let this slide. Quality control man."

"I guess. But, I don't have anything prepared you know."

"Can't we take some old shit with us? Just grab a few blasters and some armour we still have lying around?"

"I guess. But… It wouldn't fit the theme. If we go out without a theme, our rep's ruined."

"But we're going out because our rep will be ruined if we don't. Come on, we'll say it's a 'greatest hits' or something, a video-game medley."

"Yeah, but, like…. fine."

*** Glory Girl ***

"Ha, found you!" Glory Girl screamed, kicking open the door of the boys room.

Inside, one of them perched on the sinks, were two guys engaged in a most nefarious act.

They were not, however, Uber and Leet.

"Ehmmm. Sorry for interrupting?"

Vicky grabbed the door from the floor, and attempted to place it back in the doorway. It didn't fit, having been thrown of its hinges, so she just meekly floated away.

Where the hell were these guys? She raced through the corridors, over the heads of panicking students when she saw them. TThe principals office had been the first place she'd checked, but they hadn't been there. So, maybe there was more to it. There was that recent bathroom stuff in the news, with some big political stink somewhere. So she'd thought that maybe the 'princess' was in a boys bathroom, being all progressive about it. But the last three she'd checked had been empty, and this one, while busy, hadn't exactly been populated by incompetent supervillains. She flew forward, and rounded a corner to the next bathroom.

The world turned upside down and tumbled around.

"Watch where you're going!" She shouted.

"No, you watch where you're going." Aegis's voice countered. She looked up, watching from her position lodged in the wall, over Aegis's body. Kid Win and the new girl, Argenta, in some sort of bodysuit. She didn't have her armour with her, which sort of made sense. Carrying around a spare set of armour that massive wouldn't make sense.

"So, you find them yet?" she asked.

"No, I think they have stealth tech or something." Kid win answered.

Stealth-stuff, that would suck. But it made sense, Leet always had completely different inventions, stealth tech didn't seem like too far a reach.

"You got any counters?" Victoria asked. He was the tinker, he probably knew what was going on.

"Not really, but sort of. We're using Argenta's electric tendrils and Gallant's emotion-sight to try and pierce their stealth, but it hasn't worked yet."

Smart, good move, roughly what she would have proposed. Dean generally saw right through everything, including walls, and Argenta was really new, so any tech probably wouldn't have taken her into account.

"Any reinforcements incoming? Or is this it?"

Aegis answered this time. "Two PRT squads have moved out, but they're waiting for confirmation of actual risk before sending out the protectorate. How about on your side?"

"Sister's in the nurses office. But everyone else is either at work or at university. Doesn't seem like they'll be joining us, unless this situation goes out of control."

"So it's just us then. It would really help if we figured out what they were here for, or how they're controlling the sound system."

"Wait, they didn't go to the video room?"

"No, Triumphs half of the team went there and they said they didn't know about anything, and had no control over the system."

"Some sort of signal hijacking tech from Leet then? Have you tried Master/Stranger protocols with the PRT?" Victoria suggested.

If they could hijack the signal of the speaker system, they could've hijacked the connections on their phones as well.

"No, but good idea, Kid Win?" Aegis said, and Kid Win started fiddling with his phone, placing a call.

At least she'd managed to untangle herself from her mid-air collision with Aegis.

"Could be that this is all a distraction… what else could they be going for?" She said.

"Don't know, some place close, if they want to keep us occupied?" Argenta kicked in. Her voice was high, and she seemed to be younger than her ample chest suggested.

And, did she recognize that voice? No, it would probably be better not to think that way.

"Probably… Maybe the bank or something?" she suggested.

"Also, has anyone tried checking their stream? Maybe that'll give us some clue?"

"I tried" Kid Win said, "But they're not online yet, so there's either a delay programmed in, or they want to edit the footage before sending it out."

At that point, the speakers turned on again.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome back to the Uber and Leet show. As it turns out, your heroes are very very bad at the game of Clue." Uber's voice boomed.

"So bad, in fact, that we have to give them another Clue. But this time, it comes at a cost." Leet continued.

"So, you better hurry, because the clocks ticking. So here's the hint; 'What's blue, and Large, and fits in your pocket."

"But beware you don't plug it into a wall socket."

Victorias mind raced. Blue and large, but pocketsized. Some sort of gadget with an XL edition that wasn't all that large? Something that didn't work with normal chargers? How would that lead them to Uber and Leet. It just didn't make any sense... Where were they?


	33. Chapter 5,8

**Gadget 5.8**

This… was starting to get out of hand.

There were cars outside, or rather, vans. PRT vans.

Maybe I should've lowered the delay on the final message…

Someone knocked on the door, and half the people in the room ducked under a table.

"Open the door please, we're with the PRT."

The teacher, happy that someone else who knew what to do was here, went and opened the door. On the other side stood a heavily armoured PRT agent of indeterminate gender with a big faceplate. Even if they were supposed to be the good guys, they looked a hell of a lot like cheap movie villains. Forgettable and vaguely menacing.

After a short hushed conversation with the teacher, the officer spoke to the class.

"Okay everyone, we're evacuating just to be sure, please form up in an orderly line and follow us outside. Once outside, please stick together as a group, we need to make sure we have everyone out of the building."

After that, people started lining up, and the PRT man said something to someone standing next to him. Another officer, this time one I was pretty srue was a woman, walked into the room and went for me.

How the fuck did they know, and how was I going to find my way out of this?

I couldn't very well summon my tech here, everyone would know who I was, but, if the PRT already knew I'd been responsible…

"Hello miss, I reckon you'll need some help evacuating right?" the woman said.

That, of course, was also a completely reasonable reason for them to want to talk to me…

"I can walk!" I replied, she'd hopefully leave me alone. The less I had to do with the PRT, the lower the chance of me being caught.

"Okay, that's good to hear" She said cheerily. "I'll be right here if something goes wrong okay?

She stood by my side when everyone had lined up, and guided me to the end of the line. The officer at the door took a quick look outside, and motioned for everyone to follow.

Everything went fine, until we hit the stairs.

Because of course we were taking the stairs.

"You all right miss?" the woman asked again, little busybody that she was.

"uh-huh."

I started my journey down the stairs, slowly but steadily. Except after about five steps, the woman interrupted me again.

"I think this'll be safer if I carry you, if that's okay? You just hold your crutch, and I'll make sure we make it down the steps."

… It didn't look like she was going to let me walk down the stairs, and everyone else was waiting for us. Watching us. Great…

I took hold of my crutch and got it over with. The PRT-woman was remarkably strong, and carried me down in a manner of seconds. Once downstairs, she decided to keep carrying me until we were outside. It was all very gallant, and also very galling.

Outside were a few groups of students with teacher, each about half the size they should've been. Apparently, people hadn't been very serious about proper evacuation procedure. Something that was in my favour, because it meant they'd think one of the runners had done it. There were also two big vans with some sort of turret on top, and 4 PRT guys, or gals, or robots, I couldn't really tell.

The woman holding me set me down, and started talking again. "Well, there you go, now, I have to go inside again, so see you later okay?"

"Sure…" I replied. I wasn't sure if I really did want to see her again, but whatever.

I observed the mayhem… This had been a bit much…

I'd counted on the school maybe partially evacuating. I hadn't really expected the PRT to show up.

Oh well, the last message would play in about five minutes, and my tech would disappear in about ten more, so, you know, no problem there.

All of a sudden, someone was talking to one of the PRT guys, one of the local heroes. His costume was red with racing stripes, so it had to be Velocity. I'd remembered him because his costume actually made sense. His power was going fast, his name was speed, and he was both red and had racing stripes.

Very much unlike, say, Armsmaster, who only had two arms, or Miss Militia, who was dressed as a professional soldier instead. That didn't make any fucking sense, if she's in the militia, wouldn't she be wearing the outfit of the normal military instead? Not to mention Battery, who wasn't dressed as a bunny at all.

After a few seconds of talking, he glanced our way, and then ran inside.

How fast could the guy run anyway? Could he run faster than sound? That could be cool. And what would happen if he was talking and also running towards you, would he just sound like a little girl because of the whole Doppler thing?

At that moment, the speakers turned on again, the way they were set up, we could hear them out here as well.

"Well everyone, it looks like your brave heroes have failed." Leet's voice boomed over the yard.

"So now for the punishment game." Uber continued.

People started gasping about the whole punishment game deal.

"School destruction in 10" Leet said

"9" Uber continued

People started running away… were they actually convinced the school was going to explode?

"8"

"7"

"6"

"5"

"… Ehhh, just kidding" Leet's voice said.

"… Leet's just saying that because his bombs are the only thing he makes that don't blow up." Uber continued.

"…fuck off man."

"Uber and Leet out."

That was it, the final message.

I looked around, people had stopped running. Some of them were even laughing, sort of, when they thought no-one was looking.

*** Shadow Stalker ***

Sophia raced across the rooftops, stopping to check her phone every now and then. Twitter said Arcadia was getting evacuated, and that they hadn't found Uber and Leet yet.

Hilarious, all the wards in one school and they can't fucking catch a pair of idiots. No worries though, Shadow Stalker was on the case.

She started running again, and got two roofs further when she noticed someone standing on the next roof, waiting for her.

Dauntless. Again. Every fucking time. Had it been Assault, or Militia, or even fucking Armsmaster, she could've just ignored them. Nothing they could do against her.

Dauntless could fly. And he had that fucking electro-spear. It was fucking stupid, but Sophia knew not to antagonize him. They said he could be triumvirate level someday. She really didn't want to fuck with that. And hey, even Lions were afraid of snakes, or something. Probably, Sophia had never paid much attention to anything but the good shit in those documentaries.

He was just standing there, that stupid smirk on his face. Waiting. Being an asshole.

Sophia landed on the building Dauntless was on, and stopped.

"Sup Shadow Stalker?" he asked, his hair flowing in the wind beneath his pretentious little golden helmet.

She thought about it for a second… if she told him where she was going, he'd be a pain in the ass about it. All "whawha its too dangerous whawhawha". Pathetic, she was strong, not like the fucking wards who couldn't even catch two idiots.

"Just, you know, patrolling."

Dauntless held his arm out in front of him, making an entire show of looking at what Sophia assumed was his watch.

"Are you sure? I mean, it's the middle of the day, and you usually run around in the evening instead…"

"… shut up…"

But Dauntless didn't listen, instead, he continued. "In fact, if I were to make a guess, I'd say that right now is about the time that you should be in school."

"…"

"Stalker… you know you can tell me if there's problems at school."

Sophia nodded. This whole thing again. Dauntless pretending to be the fucking nice guy. Why he did that, she had no idea, dude could taze people from a city-block away, it wasn't like he needed to suck up to anyone, least of all her.

With people in school, she could understand. She was at the top, people sucked up to her and Emma would go easy on her, to get a place amongst their inner circle or some shit. Sophia left most of that stuff to Emma. And Emma? Well that was really obvious, Emma knew she was a cape, a parahuman, it was only logical she'd be as nice as possible.

But Dauntless was also a cape, and he was clearly a lot stronger than she was, at least in powers. In a normal fight, Sophia was pretty sure she could win.

So why was he trying to suck up to her…

"s'not school…"

Dauntless had half a smile on his face.

"So if there's no problem at school, I guess you're after the dynamic duo?"

Fuck… fucking fucker… how had he known…

"…no"

He didn't buy it. Of course he didn't buy it; his power let him give his stuff powers. He probably had a lie-detector or something in his helmet.

"Because, you know, if you were, I could use some help."

"The fuck does that mean?"

"I'm here to intercept them if they try to escape, and I could use your help.

Interception… that meant letting other idiots fight first.

On the other hand, if the wards failed, and she succeeded, that would be great wouldn't it. She started smiling, and nodded towards Dauntless.

Dauntless grabbed around in his pocket for something, found it, and then threw it at her.

She looked at it, and back at Dauntless.

"Spare earpiece, makes it easier to talk, so, how about you take the western side, and I take the east? Call each other the moment we see something?"

"… Okay…"

Sophia put in the earpiece, and started running in the direction Dauntless had pointed at, West of Arcadia.

One she was two roofs over, her earpiece went of.

"Testes testes one two three."

Fucking Dauntles…

"You should see a fucking doctor about that." She replied.

Dauntless didn't answer.

Until he did.

"Uhmm, Stalker, if you want to say something you have to press it twice to turn on the receiver."

She shifted back to her normal state. Electronics in her shadow-state were weird. If she carried them with her, like her phone, or this earpiece, they sometimes even kept working. But if she touched them in her shadow state while they were normal? Zap.

She clicked the earpiece twice.

"That's fucking stupid, why can't it just work?"

He was silent for a second or two.

"So you can talk about annoying co-workers behind their backs?"

"… fucking stupid…"

"You do actually have to turn it off again."

She clicked her earpiece again, hopefully turning the receiver off.

Her phone buzzed with a message, and she took a second to see what it was.

A notification.

Uber and Leet had gone online.

About fucking time.

She clicked the earbud again.

"This working?"

"Loud and clear" Dauntless replied.

"They just went online"

"Got it, I'll make sure someone's on it."

His voice suddenly stopped, and Sophia rushed forward to the next building. After about half a minute, Dauntless's voice returned.

"Stalker?"

"yeah?"

"Good thinking, tracking their stream."

She was silent for a bit, enjoying the air rushing through her body.

… Fucking Dauntless…

She landed again, her heart rushing into action, blood pumping through her veins, slightly faster than normal.

She wondered why Uber and Leet had only gone online now, instead of when they started. She could start up their stream, but, she couldn't really watch it when in her shadow-state.

"From what I'm told, the attack was fake, and they're out here to deal with the faker." Dauntless said.

"The fuck are they then?"

"Not sure yet, but they seem to be in the vicinity. Velocity's checking the streets and alleys, so we'll stay on the roof."

"Okay…"

She looked around. If she were a pair of utterly pathetic idiots, where would she be? Somewhere with a good camera angle, except they had their flying thing, so they needed to be able to stand in front of the school so it'd be in the background of the shot.

Except Dauntless said he didn't know where they were, so maybe the school wasn't in the image. In that case, they're want a location that was close, but from where you couldn't see the school.

She looked around, and found a probable location. A tall building with a medium-sized maintenance building on top, behind which they could stand.

As good a place as any. She rushed forward, shifting only to add more speed to her mad dash.

The building had an external fire escape. Something she could use. She jumped to it, and stopped in her tracks. Then, she jumped upwards, shifting states the moment she stopped touching the ground.

It was weird, her power, forces were weird, and inconsistent. She'd paid attention during the science class, and it just didn't make sense. The big thing was the whole Force=mass*acceleration thing. If she jumped, she had an amount of force. Then, if she went shadow-state, she'd have lower mass, so she would go faster, right? Or was that speed instead of acceleration? Anyway, what seemed to actually happen, was that she kept her speed from the initial moment. Even gravity had a lower effect on her. It was weird, but useful. Meant she could do this, just fly upwards pushing of against the ground every now and then.

If only she could figure out how to do the whole wall-jumping/walking/running thing. That stuff looked fucking awesome but was basically impossible, probably.

She reached the top of the building, and jumped on top of the small building on top of the roof, hiding between the different satellite dishes, staying in her shadow-state, careful not to touch anything electronic. She snuck forward, and saw them. Standing beneath her.

They weren't in costume. Or rather, they were, but the costumes didn't match. Leet had some sort of fire-gauntlet thing from Mario, some sort of glowing energy-based jetpack, a weird medieval style helmet, and metal boots. On second thought, she recognized those boots, they were the ones you head to wear in the stupid fucking underwater temple in Zelda. These assholes couldn't even make one of the cool items, like the hookshot. Fucking idiots.

Uber, in the meantime, had a fucking lightsaber, and a more normal jetpack that looked like it worked by shooting fire from the back. He had the helmet Metroid wore. Or whatever she was called, the Metroid chick.

He also had some other shit on his belt, and pants with way too many zippers and belts.

It looked fucking stupid.

It also looked heavily armed.

Very heavily armed…

She turned on her earpiece by double-tapping, feeding Dauntless an audio-feed.

"So, because this fucking asshole thinks he can outdo us. We are going to take them the fuck down!" Uber said. He was angry, because some itty bitty school-kid had stolen his schtick.

"I take it this means you found them?" Dauntless asked.

Now, how to inform him of her location without giving away the surprise to the idiots below her.

She snuck back to the other side of the maze of electrical stuff on the roof she was standing on, and looked for Dauntless in the sky.

"… they're dressed up all fucking weird…"

"The random assortment of weaponry? I'd heard. Where are you right now?"

"Top of a big building, you're flying right in front of me."

"Stalker, could you please tell me where you are in relation to me?"

Fucking idiot… she'd just…

"I just fucking told you" she whispered, slightly louder than strictly wise, hopefully, they hadn't heard.

"Sorry, I mean the other way around. I am right in front of you, but where are you for me? To the left, the right? Do you know how clock-face directions work?"

She thought about it for a second, of course he didn't just say what he fucking meant…

"I'm like, ten past half? Big building with a second thing on the roof, slightly below you."

Dauntless turned in mid-air, and looked in her direction. She held her hand up to wave, and he waved back.

She continued. "They're on the other side of this thing."

"Got it," he replied. "Good work Stalker, well done."

Stupid, it was just a fucking scouting thing. the fucking wards probably ate that shit, but she wouldn't… Dauntless was just stupid…

"I just informed headquarters, so we can expect backup from Aegis and probably Glory-Girl, but I don't think we need to wait for them since we still have the element of surprise."

Of course, those fucking gloryhogs wanted to steal her fucking fight…

"okay…"

"So, I'll fly around, come up from below them, and strike as soon as I reach the edge of the roof. Then, you sneak in and take out Leet before he can react. Once the Tinker's out, we'll deal with Uber together. And remember Stalker, be careful with your crossbow."

"Okay.."

"Lets do this together Stalker!" he shouted enthusiastically.

Sophia went back to her perch, spying on the two. They were talking about respect and stuff like that, and she was pretty sure they were still talking to the camera because they weren't quite sure what else to do. They probably had no idea who was responsible for whatever had happened at Arcadia.

Dauntless flew upwards, his items glowing white with power, his head covered by his golden helmet. She had to admit, it did look kinda cool. Not as cool as her outfit, but whatever.

His spear struck out, white lightning flashing forwards and striking the area around Uber and Leet. Uber was fast though, as was their little floating drone orb thing. the golden snitch people on the internet called it. Uber had rolled to the side, and grabbed something from his pockets she couldn't see. She couldn't see it, because she was rushing for Leet with his stupid fucking boots. He'd been taken by surprise and zapped, this would be easy.

Except once she was halfway to him, he suddenly turned around and threw a fireball from his gauntlet.

She went shadow, right through the fire. The air was warm, but that wasn't really a problem. She just needed to make sure that it was all through her when she turned back to normal. She'd shifted in the middle of a hot ash cloud once by accident. The pain had immediately brought her back into her shadow-state.

She swung her feat low, aiming for the knees, just above his metal boots. She started shifting back to normal just in time to hit, but he'd brought his leg up fast enough that she'd hit the solid steel of the boot. It was supposed to be cloth at the top, but they were cheating assholes.

She delayed her shift, and her leg went right through Leet's metal boot, turning real only when it smashed into his other knee.

"Fucking bitch!" he shouted, throwing fireballs just in front of her. She shifted back to her shadowstate, and he kept up the barrage, hitting exactly where she wanted to go every single time.

That and the voice told her she'd made a mistake.

She'd expected Uber to have the lightsaber, because Uber was the better of the two, and lightsabers were fucking awesome. She also expected Uber to be the one that actually dodged Dauntless's strike.

Wrong on both accounts, she was fighting Uber right now. Fuck.

She couldn't turn back to normal, as she couldn't escape his fireballs. And she couldn't go through him, she didn't trust the jetpack, since it was obviously electrical.

But he didn't know that.

As she heard the lightning of Dauntless's spear crackle behind her, she bum rushed Uber in her shadow state.

As she expected, before she'd even reached him, he was starting to turn around, ready for her to appear there.

Instead, she shifted back to normal and crashed into him.

But instead of falling down, he just sort of floated backwards, and she with him. It was like he had no weight…

The jetpack…

With one hand, she grabbed one of the metal horn thingies on Ubers helmet, with the other, she grasped for something to tear of. A strap from his jetpack or his gauntlet, anything. Fucking tinkers.

Uber, in the meantime, had half turned around, and grasped her arm instead. Not with the gauntleted hand, she'd managed to evade that one, but the unarmed one.

Sophia tried to kick him in the knee again, but found that he was well and truly floating. And, grabbing each other as they were, so was she.

He hadn't been standing on the roof after she'd kicked his knee into the next month, he'd just been floating with his feet touching the ground.

And now, due to the energy of her charge, they were floating together. Going towards the side of the roof at a slow but steady pace.

*** Uber ***

Leet was as good as down, anyone could see that, even the Snitch. So instead, it had started focusing on him and Shadow Stalker…

Since when did Shadow Stalker team up with Dauntless? And where the fuck had Dauntless learned how to do a surprise attack. He wasn't the most subtle of people.

And now his fucking knee hurt, probably broken from the fourteen year old slamming into it from the inside with her full body-weight.

But he almost had her. She was probably thinking he couldn't hit her with his gauntleted right hand, that that was why he'd only used his left to grab hold of her.

Well, she was wrong, And though her pawing at his gear was annoying, it could hold up for a couple of seconds.

Once they were over the side of the roof, he'd grasp her with the fire gauntlet. She'd turn to her shadow-state to escape, lose her hold on him, and fall down to the ground. She'd probably survive, but it'd take her a long time until she was up again, and he'd be long gone by that time.

He checked himself in third-person perspective from the Snitch's eyes. One of the functionalities of this helmet, Dark Souls was in Third-Person after all.

The girl was still angrily sticking to him. Clearly visible to the camera. Annoying, because everyone online would say that he just loved to have fourteen-year-olds, pawing at him. That was the problem with teenage vigilantes. If you won, people said you were overly brutal, and they'd come down on you. If you lost, people would laugh at you. And even though Shadow Stalker wasn't that famous, she was on camera right now.

No, better to just targets the dregs of society, the idiots no-one cared about. And hey, if she died from the fall, it would be too far down to be clearly visible in the shot. Most people never read the article, so if it wasn't on tape, it was like it hadn't happened.

Now, how to take down Dauntless. That was far more problematic. Leet's lightsaber could only absorb and reflect so much energy, and he was pretty sure the different visors from the helmet wouldn't work here.

He shouldn't have let Leet grab the lightsaber, he was far more effective with it himself.

But then, that was the case for every piece of gear wasn't it.

Shadow Stalker was shouting something obscene at him. It didn't really bother him. It wasn't like their show was very PG, and he'd heard far worse online.

They went over the edge of the roof, Shadow Stalker still holding on to his helmet, and him grabbing hold of her other arm now. Wrestling like this was easy, even in zero-G, it was still the same type of bodies, the same applicable techniques. He turned her wrist, and she squirmed in just the right way for him to reach around with his gauntlet, grabbing her leg with the metal monstrosity, he started heating it up.

*** ? ***

The girl gave a shout, and turned back into her Breaker-state, falling out of the man's grasp. Then, she made a rather intriguing movement. She shifted back to normal, with her right hand grabbing something from her back. In one graceful movement, she shot her crossbow at a moving target while falling.

She hit the man's jetpack, which wasn't something his skillset had prepared him for. That made sense if she was right about his powers. It sputtered, and he started falling as well.

Having started falling about a second earlier, the girl turned back into her breaker state, slowing the acceleration of her fall. When the man had almost caught up, she shifted back, holding her leg upwards to catch him in his weak spot.

Sloppy, she would have been better served by taking out either the man's gauntleted limb or his other knee. Nonetheless, it seemed to work, and the girl turned to shadow again, reappearing on the other side of her opponent, who had fallen through her.

She seemed to be in pain. A weakness to going through people? Some sort of Manton effect? No, she seemed to be perfectly fine with the legs. Something in the equipment then? A tinker-tech counter? No they obviously hadn't expected her, so it was something more universal. A material her state didn't work with properly? Or maybe the electrical charge of the tech?

Nonetheless, the girl pulled through and oriented herself in her fall, getting ready to dodge anything the man shot at her with his gauntlet.

Instead, the man activated some of his technology in an expert manner. A fluid movement, he suddenly got sucked towards the wall of the building they were falling of, and his boots attached themselves to the side of the building, leaving a scar in the brickwork above the place where he came to rest.

It was such a shame… His movements looked good, fluid. But when she observed further, they were too good, too perfect, mechanical. It missed exactly that which made martial arts an art. He had gotten them from his powers, and lacked experience. In many cases, his near-endless skillset could compensate, but this situation was pretty much unique, not something he'd already loaded into his brain with his power. As such, the girl had an advantage. She'd pounded the rhythm of combat into her body, and while she might be sloppy, her movements were instinctual. A predator, taking down a Karate-Kid that learned everything he knew from Mister Miyagi's book. The moment things went off the expected path, she'd won.

The girl twisted her cape one way, and turned partially into her breaker form, the effect having a hard time reaching the end of her cape. She used this to induce a horizontal movement into her fall.

Left leg first, she was aiming for the man's torso. Hoping that the downward force would throw him from the wall of the building. Or was she? The way she held her cape now that she had already changed the direction of her descent, she had a plan.

The man shot another fireball upwards, but she shifted her entire body into the shadow-state again.

Except for her cape, which fluttered a bit behind her in an arc, the end of it caught in one of her hands. The girl crashed through the male cape in her shadow form, evidently she thought that the benefits outweighed the risk she was taking with her weakness to his gear.

She cried out while going through him, a movement of her body only slightly visible in her shadow-state. She tried to hide it, but wasn't very good at it. That needed work, she shouldn't just give away hear weaknesses that easily.

But, once her body was through, she partially went out of her shadow-state again. It was obviously not an entirely binary switch.

The cloak pulled the man down, all the while shifting through him. In the meantime, the girl had used the torque provided by her cape being inside the guy and apparently applying forces, to shift her body again. She shifted herself upside down, and kicked the man in the head with semi-translucent legs. They both started tumbling, rotating in their fall at a velocity too high for the man's tinkertech boots to properly work again.

The man started screaming, Logical, they were already three-quarters down, but the fall would probably still be lethal, especially with the way he was spinning. There were techniques he could use to reduce the damage from falling, but he still had the girl to deal with.

That's when the girl also looked down, and started panicking.

Sloppy, she should've known what would happen if they fought while falling.

In her panick, she grabbed hold of the man who had been her enemy, who started struggling against her, now unable to properly prepare for the fall.

About a half-second before hitting the floor, she shunted the both of them into her shadow-state

Something went wrong, her power hadn't been intended for this. When they hit the ground, the two shadows slightly dispersed. And then came back together at some distance from each other.

The girl was breathing heavily, strained. A standard thing from overusing breaker-states, similar to thinker-headaches. Shortness of breath, followed by massive muscle cramps. She'd survive, but she was out of the fight.

The man however, could still move, although strained. Had he not been hit by the feedback from the power? No, he probably just dealt with it better because of one of his acquired techniques.

He stood up, and started walking towards the girl, visibly straining with every step. His need for vengeance obviously outweighing his desire to look good in front of the camera.

He'd taken four steps when the lightning-chucker crashed into him from above. The force threw away the drone that had been filming everything. It was the end of the show. Watching the young vigilante fight had been… interesting. Intriguing, intoxicating. 

*** Gadget ***

Everyone ran for the crash site, including Glory Girl, who'd just exited the building.

There'd been an actual Uber and Leet fight, even if the whole attack had been faked.

This was turning out way better than I'd expected. Sure, it'd been a little bit of an over-reaction from everyone, but it'd been fun.

And while everyone ran for the place where lightning-man had crashed down, I could investigate something that no-one else seemed to be paying attention to.

If my eyes hadn't betrayed me, it'd be somewhere around here.

And then I saw it, in a corner, no bigger than a basketball.

Problem was, it was probably filled with trackers and shit.

I might be able to take it apart here, take out the trackers, grab the individual components.

But I only had one hand available, and there were lots of people around, including PRT people and heroes who probably wanted their hands on this thing. And If I started working, they'd find the stuff I'd left behind.

No, instead, I'd simply have to analyse it in the back of my head. Plus, the thing was sturdy, having gone through all of their stunts so far. It didn't look like it had any big breaks in it or anything, it was just a little beat up. Given how bad Leet reportedly was with repairing stuff.

I touched it, and extended my power.

…

What the hell where those noises coming out of my mouth… and why did this feel so good? I could just feel it, right there in the back of my head. The video-equipment inside it was pretty much normal, as was the sender and receiver, but the rest….

Oooh thinking about that felt good. The golden outside… it was some sort of semi-self-repairing active camouflage thing... Had I been a few minuts later, it would've been invisible.

And the anti-grav… oh my... I hadn't expected it, but Leet really did know how to make a girl happy.

I had to get my hands on more tinkertech...


	34. Chapter 5,9

**Chapter 5.9**  
Absolutely everything hurt, her heart was pounding, and she had to gasp for air.

That had not been a good idea.

That had, in fact, been a very bad idea

Why the fuck had she just saved Uber…

Why did everything hurt so fucking bad…

Then Sophia remembered… Because that fucking drone had been viewing them, and if she hadn't helped, it would've somehow been her fault that Uber was a pancake…

She heard a few footsteps, followed by a massive crash of lightning. Trying to move her head in order to see, she decided that it hurt just a little too much.

Breathe in, and out. In, and out. Eventually, her lungs had gotten themselves under control.

Air was always the problem is something went wrong with her power. The wind, moving about, even just normal movement of air, made sure that her body could breathe even in her Shadow State. But, if something went wrong, say, something big hit her in that state, or someone uses something like pepperspray, it would interfere with that. Worst case scenario, similar to what seemed to have happened here. She'd be forced back into her normal state to breathe.

She raised her head, checking that the black hockey-mask was still in place.

It was, her identity was safe for now. Looking around, she saw Dauntless putting a completely beaten up Uber in chains. The fucking idiot was crying that his wounds hurt, utterly pathetic.

Behind Dauntless, she saw a whole lot of people approaching to watch. Mostly high-schoolers, the idiots that had been so fucking afraid of Uber and Leet, finally finding the courage to come out and watch.

She sat up, her body only barely obeying her commands, and spotted a few PRT agents. They were running towards Dauntless, and taking over for him. Dauntless, in the meantime, was walking towards her, smiling.

He held out a hand, offering to help her stand up. "Well done Stalker, I told you, we make a great team."

Sophia stood up, studiously trying to ignore the hand in front of her. She wasn't weak, she didn't need his help.

Before she knew it, the hand had been slung across her shoulders instead. With it, Dauntless pointed to a news van that was standing in front of the school, a camera-man, a sound guy and a spunky blonde reporter running towards them from the van.

"Well, let's say hello to the press." Dauntless said, subtly pushing Shadow Stalker with one hand, the other holding his lightning spear.

Sophia fought through the pain in her legs, she wasn't weak, she could still stand and walk forwards.

She just didn't want to talk to some fucking idiot from the fucking news channel. She'd probably ask some retarded questions about whether or not it was scary or not and something about shoe-shopping. Idiots always talked about shoe shopping, even Emma wasn't safe from that affliction.

Shoes were for kicking people. As long as they had steel toes, they were good shoes.

And they were also for track. Shoe shopping for her running was actually fun, just stupid expensive and not what Emma meant when she said she wanted to go shoe-shopping.

How the fuck did you fight in heels anyway?

"Hello Rosette" Dauntless said to the news girl. She was tall, big breasted, probably not very intelligent, had some sort of "I'm a soccer mom but also a slut" haircut, and was blushing.

Fucking bitch.

The bitch gave a small wave and turned to the camera.

"Good afternoon everyone. We are here near Arcadia high which has just recovered from a terrible attack by the supervillain duo of Uber & Leet, a pair of criminals most famous for making videos of their criminal activities and putting them on the internet, in a new fad called 'streaming'. We are here with Brockton Bays very own Dauntless, who has just apprehended one of the criminals. Dauntless, what can you tell us about the events of today?"

Dauntless, apparently utterly okay with the strange way of holding a conversation, answered the woman's question, his arm still wrapped about Sophia's body in a way that was probably supposed to suggest camaraderie or some such shit.

"Good afternoon Rosette, and good afternoon Brockton Bay" he said, smiling for the camera.

"I can tell you that the supervillains Uber and Leet attacked the local high school in a terrible plot, foiled only by the incompetence of their bomb-making. Luckily, I was able to intercept them as they made their escape, and stop Uber in his tracks."

Why the fuck was he lying? That wasn't what had happened. It wasn't even close at all. Was he just telling the story in such a way that it made him look better?

No, more logically, he knew she didn't like shit like this, all the fucking attention from a bunch of fucking idiots, so he was taking all the attention.

"Oh my, that sounds very scary. Can you tell us how you did so?"

"Well, I figured out where they were hiding, on top of this building here, and I flew up and surprised them with my spear. Leet managed to get away with his jetpack, but Uber's jetpack malfunctioned, and he crashed to the ground, and I managed to stop him before he was able to escape."

"You heard it people, it's all very exciting in this city full of capes" the bitch said to the camera, talking in a voice so high it sounded like a chipmunk. She continued: "And what about this young lady next to you, is she a new ward?"

Sophia and Dauntless started talking at the same time

"Fuck no!/No, she's just a friend of sorts."

Ignoring her, the fucking bitch replied to Dauntless.

"Oh, how do you know each other, and did she help you today?"

"How we know each other? I ran into her on patrol, we had a little chat, exchanged some heroic banter, you know, the works."

The idiot little Chihuahua in human form turned her way, and yapped again: "Oh, so you're a vigilante miss? Can our viewers have your name."

The camera turned, and was also aimed at her now, and the sound guy had a big flying microphone hovering above her hands. Why the fuck was it called a microphone if they were so big… It was so fucking stupid.

People in the audience had also turned their attention towards her, the onlooking students trying to make pictures with their fucking little smartphones. Behind the massive crowd, she could see some of the fucking wards, including electro-bitch, as well as the new New Wave chick, Glory Girl.

" I gotta get back to school." She said, turning to her shadow form. The crowd gasped, amazed at just a bit of her powers. Bunch of fucking sheep.

Dauntless didn't stop her, and barely missed a beat before talking to the camera again.

"Well, as you see, even for a vigilante like Shadow-Stalker, school is important kids!" 

*** Glory Girl ***

A prank.

A fucking prank.

She'd been flying through the school, ripping locked doors out of their sockets to check behind them, and it'd been a fucking prank,

Absolutely amazing! Now only to find the person responsible and beat him up.

Then, Vicky heard a crash from outside. Accelerating quickly, she soared to a half-open window, and tried to open it.

It was locked in its half-open state, probably to prevent some idiotic teenager from doing exactly what she was about to do.

On one hand, it would be undue collateral damage if she smashed the lock for no reason.

On the other hand, what if she held back, flew down the big sets of stairs, to the front entrance, and then outside, only to be too late?

Vicky flew through the window, towards the front of the school, trying to figure out what that noise had been.

A crowd had gathered, and a few of the other wards, the ones that had already been outside after it'd become clear this was all a prank, were standing outside. She flew towards them as they approached the commotion.

"Well, that was certainly something" she said, as Aegis approached her. "Any idea what happened here?"

"Well, the press is already talking to Dauntless, and that's uber lying on the ground." He replied.

Argenta spoke up in her squeaky little voice. "Who's the girl?"

Aegis looked around, searching for someone, eventually finding what he was looking for when looking back at the school. Triumph was only just leaving the building.

"A vigilante that calls herself Shadow Stalker. Tends to run around at night and flee the moment she sees someone. I heard Dauntless has a chat with her every now and then."

Wait, that was Shadow Stalker? Victoria had heard about her, mostly when beating up criminals. Apparently, most of them weren't even sure whether or not Stalker really existed, or was even a cape. She just dropped in, beat someone up, and disappeared into the shadows, using a crossbow every now and then when things got hairy.

After the journalist had asked her a question, the girl ran, turning into her breaker form.

Victoria turned around, seeing Dean and the others finally catching up. "I'mma go chat with her, see you guys later." She said, before flying after Stalker. Fifteen seconds later, she got a message, and checked her phone. It was from Dean. "Don't get yourself shot."

The loveable idiot worried too much. She was invincible.

Then, she saw a shadow moving in the corner of her eye, on one of the buildings beneath her. That'd probably been Stalker. She set off on an interception course. Aiming for a building where Shadow Stalker was about to pass by.

Knee first, one hand on the floor, Victoria thought this was going to be amazing.

Right up to the point where her face hit the roof of the building.

"Fucking superhero landings…"

She heard footsteps approaching. Stalker…

They stopped for about half a second, just in front of her.

"The fuck's your problem?"

"Give me a break all right, this three-point landing is actually quite hard!"

"Whatever, just leave me alone." The voice replied, before leaving again. If she wanted to have a chat with Shadow Stalker, she'd have to try another day.

But first, to figure out how to properly do an awesome superhero landing. 

*** Gadget ***

The rest of the day, there was no school.

Neither was there any homework.

But I still had a problem.

Leet's tech was absolutely awesome.

It was also a piece of shit that didn't make any sense.

I could understand the principle behind it, why what part was made in what way, but it just wasn't logical.

I'd even drawn it out, seeing what I was missing, but I couldn't help but come to my conclusion.

The Snitch could basically explode at any moment. Or fry itself, or overheat, or, somehow, underheat.

A single screw turned slightly too far, a wire with a slightly higher resistance, and it'd all go wrong.

Well, at least it explained why his stuff kept exploding. But I'd need to make some changes to the design if I wanted to use any of it.

The easiest was probably the anti-gravity part. Or, rather, the mass-canceler. It did some weird shit to reduce the weight to roughly nothing, meaning a very small engine could propel it about.

It wouldn't help me make gravity my bitch, but It'd get me closer.

Problem? It needed to go around the thing it was cancelling the mass of.

Unless I wanted to run around in a giant hamster ball, which, needless to say, would be kind of fun but entirely inappropriate for stealth of any kind.

No, instead, it was probably best to do something with just my torso. That'd be about 50% of the weight, meaning I'd be able to jump twice as high.

Combine that with my idea for a grappling hook, and I'd get some major mobility

Just needed some time and space to really start tinkering.

For space, I could probably find something in an abandoned building something, that was the great thing about Brockton Bay, unlike my hometown, half the buildings in the poor part of town were empty.

Even better, I could figure out some place in the boat graveyard, where the local dockworkers regularly proved they were too lazy to dig a grave for the boats in the graveyard.

Why even call it a graveyard if there aren't any graves? It was about as stupid as the idea of elephant graveyards was, they didn't bury their dead either.

So, what kind of stuff would I need to build the kind of stuff I needed? The first one, space, would work. Tools? I had enough tools and shit for however long I wanted to work, if they broke, I could just spawn in new stuff. Unless I needed something I hadn't already gotten from the hardware store.

So I'd need raw materials to work with. And electrical components if I wanted to build something smart. So some sort of processor I could rebuild to create a control mechanism for the grappling hook, plus a dense electrical power source. And some sort of cable.

I looked at my scarf… I'd tried absorbing it, but that hadn't worked, which was weird. Sure, it was big, but only in two dimensions. All folded up, I could definitely grab something similar in size.

Was it something about how it'd been made? Paige probably used her power to make it, so it'd make sense.

Or, more philosophically speaking, what if the limitation had something to do with the intended state of the item? A scarf wasn't used all rolled up, so maybe it counted as too big? In that case, I'd need to make sure that the rope I used was counted in a coiled state. Some sort of mechanism where it wouldn't uncoil unless a button was pressed after summoning it perhaps? Powers were weird.

Anyway, that meant I wouldn't be able to use the material the scarf was made it for my rope.

But I wouldn't weigh all that much if I lost half my mass, so the rope wouldn't have to be ridiculously strong. I could probably just splice something together from reclaimed iron from the boats.

So, then, what else… Some sort of cloth and a sewing machine to make the vest itself. It would probably be too big to absorb, so I'd need to make sure that the main components could work in some sort of plug-in fashion.

It would probably be possible to add in something else as well, another option. But that would come later.

So a sewing machine… wouldn't be too expensive. Probably.

And cloth, I'd need good cloth, could probably buy that from the same store as the sewing machine.

The only remaining thing was the rare earth metals required for some of the stuff that would do the actual work. Where the fuck was I going to find some Iridium this time of year, Wallmart?

Probably not.

So the hard stuff would be good batteries, or just power sources really, and some rare metals.

I could probably create a custom power-source, but it'd add quite a bit of time to the process.

Think Sely, where could I get my hands on this stuff.

Crowdsourcing, that was the answer of course.

I looked at the clock. It was about 4, and dad had send me a message that something had come up at work, and he'd be late. I could make my way to the library, set up a few proxies to make myself virtually untraceable, which was a very nice pun, and just crowd-source my questions.

*** Director Piggot ***

Parahumans were impossible. Not just because they did stuff that was, quite literally, impossible, but more in the personality sense.

First, a message had come in that Uber and Leet were attacking the high-school where the majority of the wards were stationed.

Then, a message had come in that the attack had been a hoax.

Then, a third message had arrived in the high-priority queue, detailing how Uber and Leet were probably going to attack Arcadia in retaliation for the hoax.

And instead of just solving the problem by arresting the duo, Dauntless had decided that talking to the press was more important, and had helped an absolutely absurd version of events into the world.

And that was just the latest headache. The last two weeks, she'd had to deal with Armsmaster deciding that he was a family man and needed time off every single evening, she'd had to deal with a new ward that had decided that locking the Youth Guard representative in her room would be an absolutely great idea, and one of the few sane members of her team had decided that adopting a known killer was a great idea.

Worst thing was, the Youth Guard had almost removed its local representative, but had suddenly claimed that more oversight was obviously necessary now.

And the fucking police chief of all people had talked everyone into accepting Batteries plan.

She could understand the basic idea behind it. Parahuman law was a messy thing, with so many contradictions and unsolved problems, all around different powers with different consequences, that a good lawyer was quite often able to somehow get a client out of a heavy sentence.

Police dogs however, those were a well-known quantity with well-established legislation and lots of legal precedent.

None of those laws stated that the dog in question couldn't also be nine feet tall monstrosities that could probably smell a drug-dealer from three blocks away.

So now her frustrations were doubled because she had to do all her work while hearing a bunch of barking dogs in the background, getting used to being transformed into mutant hellbeasts.

At least she could be happy that the girl had stopped trying to punch everyone.

It would still be a PR nightmare. But she could probably shove that problem to someone else's plate, that was one of the few boons of being the director.

The way her paperwork was divided, there were five big piles in front of her. On the left were all the documents regarding the PRT, the Protectorate and the Wards. Requests for special gear, testing facilities, training, upkeep, research teams, it seemed like it would never end.

Next to that, was her pile of stuff on the Empire, probably Brockton Bay's most damaging element. Sure, the other gangs weren't good for the city either, but being the Nazi capital of the country gave a city a bad reputation. The real problem, however, was that there were so damn many of them, and that they rotated so quickly. There were a few mainstays, like Kaiser himself, Purity and Krieg, but the rest of the roster kept changing. Hookwolf sadly looked like he'd be staying for a while, bloodthirsty maniac that he was, and that probably meant Stormtiger and Cricket as well. Mostly, the pile dealt with reports about hate-crimes, skinhead gathering locations, and an ever expanding list of capes who were flagged as possibly being neo-Nazi sympathizers, who could very well show up in Brockton Bay.

The middle pile dealt with Lung and the ABB. It wasn't as large as they wanted it to be. Piggot thought the reason behind this was that people didn't expect the Protectorate to be able to do anything anyway. There were some files about possible moves to rein in his gang recruitment, as well as a few reports on his more major criminal activities, most of it having to do with human smuggling, and brothels filled with imported flesh that wasn't working there entirely willingly.

It bothered her, the fact that people didn't trust the PRT, but she understood it. It hadn't been that long ago that Lung had defeated the entire Protectorate on his own.

If only her requests for help from the triumvirate ever came through…

The fourth pile dealt with her smaller worries. The Merchants were annoying, but their parahuman presence was less than spectacular. For the most part, the cops could deal with them. It also contained a few papers on New Wave, requests for co-operative training, complaints about collateral damage, that sort of thing, as well as Faultline's crew, although Piggot was willing to let them be as long as they didn't practice their craft in her city. If another department wanted to take them down, they could send the necessary manpower over. Then there were the few reports about other possible gangs and teams, mostly rumour and hearsay. People thought anyone with a weapon was a supervillain these days.

The last pile was the least important, and the hardest to deal with. The cities independents, both heroic and villainous. Right now, this was what kept her busy, reading Leet's file, trying to figure out how he would strike back in retaliation for Ubers capture.

Then there was their file on Shadow Stalker, although it'd be a few days until Dauntless would take the time to update their file on her. It was also where Hellhound's file used to be, and where there was an empty folder that just said "person responsible for Arcadia attacks".

It was a mess, and she didn't have the time, but she thought that now was as good a time as any to go through the entire stack for the first time in ages.

There was Trainwreck, a suspected case 53 tinker with a body-mod fetish. Low threat unless he needed gear for his body, he kept a low profile.

Circus, a grab-bag burglar with a flair for the dramatic. Annoying, hard to catch, but the risk she posed was minimal.

Grue, a mercenary shaker, capable of blocking sight and sound for everyone in his range. He probably wouldn't ever be much of a problem, since his power also seemed to stop his allies. There was the possibility of a team-up with night, but the psych department's best estimation of a profile said that he was a young black man, so that seemed unlikely.

The mayor's sister had complained about a mind reader stealing her credit-cards. Utterly preposterous, but it wouldn't look good if they didn't at least take her seriously.

Then, someone calling herself Spitfire had been reported as stealing from a store somewhere, but besides the name, her file was empty.

Then there was Binary, a young woman that had tried to pawn of a large amount of gemstones and such, although most of the investigation on that was in WatchDog's hands.

Birdman was an utter maniac, a devout Christian going of the deep end and using his powers to sabotage abortion clinics and punch drug dealers.

And of course the teleporting master thief, named Ocean by a PRT agent with a shoddy sense of humour, had taken up business in the city.

And those were the capes they had information on, and which had been confirmed to be capes. There were always about a dozen rumours a month about new capes, which at least half of the time turned out to be idiots pretending to have powers getting stabbed by a drug dealer.

Someone knocked on the door, and Piggot checked the small monitor hidden in her desk. Triumph.

"Come in"

The young man, child really, walked in, mask on his face.

"You wanted to see me ma'am?"

"Yes, about the Arcadia situation."

"Its… I'm not sure what you want to know. Someone faked a supervillain attack, there was no enemy, no-one to stop, I don't see what we could have done."

Piggot sighed. It was something you often saw with Wards team leaders. Even if they could lead, they rarely had real initiative. He'd performed well in keeping everyone safe from possible villains, but that wasn't what he should have been doing.

"Did you suspect it could have been a prank?"

"I, well, not really. I mean, I've heard or people sending prank messages over the PA system, but we checked the room, no-one was there. Plus, their voices sounded right."

"So you kept searching for them, even when we already knew where they were from their stream. The problem, Triumph, is that you fell for a very simple distraction, meaning it took Shadow Stalker to actually solve the problem. Not only does that look very bad for the public, but what would have happened if someone chose to abuse the fact that you were distracted to, say, rob a bank?"

"I… I was just trying to protect people."

"No Triumph, you were trying to protect the people in your school. You have a responsibility to this city, not just your friends, do you understand that?" She said, anger starting to show in her voice, but not yelling.

"Yes director Piggot, I understand."

In the background, she could hear a massive Hellbeast bark thrice, indicating a find. At least the people there seemed to be enjoying themselves.

*** Gadget ***

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**Topic: How do Tinkers generally get their stuff?**

 **In: Boards ► America ► General Discussion ► Tinkers**

 **Not_A_Criminal** (Original Poster)

Posted on April 15, 2010:

So I was wondering, You know how Tinker build awesome tech and shit, how do you guys think they get the resources to build that shit? Like, say, if they needed a high-density power source capable of applying a low voltage with high Amperage, without taking up too much space, and not necessarily rechargeable? or more generally, how do they get their hands on stuff like Iridium and Cobalt? you can't just scan planets for that stuff and be done with it, so how do they do it? And, for discussion's sake, how would YOU do it if you were a Tinker?


	35. Interlude: PHO

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**Topic: How do Tinkers generally get their stuff?**

 **In: Boards ► America ► General Discussion ► Tinkers**

 **Not_A_Criminal** (Original Poster)

Posted on April 15, 2010:

So I was wondering, You know how Tinker build awesome tech and shit, how do you guys think they get the resources to build that shit? Like, say, if they needed a high-density power source capable of applying a low voltage with high Amperage, without taking up too much space, and not necessarily rechargeable? or more generally, how do they get their hands on stuff like Iridium and Cobalt? you can't just scan planets for that stuff and be done with it, so how do they do it? And, for discussion's sake, how would YOU do it if you were a Tinker?

Edit: No I'm not a supervillain this is all for a school project

 **(Showing Page 1 of 2)**

 **► Alucard_Of_Tibet** (Verified Police Girl)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

I'm pretty sure that you should ask the protectorate for this...or just #YOLO it but that's your choice

 **► The_Brickster** (verified Brocktonite)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

I think you can get some of those things from meteorites. Otherwise, if you're a hero you get it from the Protectorate, if you're a villain you steal it from, I don't know, college chemistry labs or something.

 **► LORD DOOMITRON** (Verified Cape)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

I CAN INDEED VERIFY THAT A COLLEGE IS A GOOD PLACE TO AQUIRE RARE MATERIALS, AS THEY OFTEN USE THEM FOR EXPERIMENTS!

 **► BingoDingo** (Veteran Member)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Where do they get it? They either buy it, have it bough for them, or steal it.

Being a tad less glib, rare minerals are available (legally. Which I'm sure is very important for you since you're not, after all, a criminal) from science supply outlets. Iridium, for example, isn't exactly cheap, but you can get all you'd need for around $1400/ounce. Hopefully you don't need much, or have deep pockets.

 **► Artichoker**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Why hello there my fellow law abiding citizen, I'm pretty law abiding myself.

Let's talk Cobalt, hypothetically. Now, it's used here and there as a pigment sure, but not a whole lot of it. Did you know that old hard drives use sizable samarium-cobalt magnets (to keep the head suspended in a temperature stable magnetic field, of course! It simply wouldn't do to have a crash because the room got a little warm) which are about 60% cobalt by mass? Though separation could be a bear if a (totally hypothetical) tinker needed the cobalt pure, their whole point is temperature stability. Plus, old hard drives are full of other fun little bits and pieces, especially the motors, their acoustic profiles are fantastic.

As far as power sources go, well, I'm sure you could find some lively discussion over at Tinker0 but most of their ideas will be stupid, impractical, dangerous, and/or fun. Hypothetically, depending on what you need, and what, exactly, is meant by "low voltage, high amperage", a (totally hypothetical) tinker might have some luck with capacitors. Did you know those cheap dollar store disposable cameras have some seriously beefy ones?

Also, hypothetically, I've read around these parts that even hypothetical tinkers tend to get abducted. Hypothetically anyway. Good thing you're totally not one, right?

 **► KING_SENPAI** (Verified Jackass)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

A potential option for you is going to the toybox. They are the main refuge for tinkers who want to stay neutral in these United States to my knowledge.

 **► Winged_One** (Unverified Cape)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

I know where a large quantity of materials is being shipped out from, New York isn't quite as empty of shipping as people would think.

 **► L RD_Commander_Sand** (Not an actual Lord Commander)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

How the **** does she always find these frickn conversations?

 **► LORD_DOOMITRON** (Verified Cape)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

AH, WINGED ONE! I HAVE YET TO THANK YOU FOR YOUR INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROTECTORATE MWNE BEING AWAY FOR A MEETING! DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE INFORMATION OF THAT SORT FOR ME?!

 **► Brickrobot789**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Please don't give him any more info. My store got caught up in his looting spree the last time you did.

Also, definitely have to recommend the Toybox if you don't have an qualms about moving to a pocket dimension. They would have pretty much everything you need.

 **► Aberranting** (Cape Groupie)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

In terms of power, I know a lot of Tinkers don't even use electricity - negating the need for any voltage/current sources! They tend to be the tinkers that make bigger stuff though, cars and giant tanks and armor suits. I think they use some kind of internal combustion engine, though it's probably some kind of magic tinker combustion. Maybe there's a tinker out there with a power-tool focus curing out really awesome chainsaws?

I'm sure there's a few tinkers that use miniaturize fission power sources, or some kind of controlled alpha-decay. There just have to be, right? But I don't really understand how those would even work. Actually, that's kind of a terrifying though - Around half of Tinker tech is basically a bomb if you don't treat it nice...

 **► Not_A_Criminal** (Original Poster)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

The Brickster

Any idea how tinkers get their hands on meteors? You'd think that, if people stole meteors, it'd be in the news. Also, wouldn't they be too big to steal? given how they can wipe out dinosaurs?

Also, does this mean there's Iridium in Dinosaur bones?

LORD DOOMITRON

Do you know if High School's also have that stuff? Because I heard lots of people get powers in highschool so do they just wait until they're in college?

Artichoker

I'm not asking hypothetically, I'm asking for a school project on Tinkers. And no, it's not for a friend's project either.

Also, does this mean there's supervillains that only steal old computers?

King Senpai

I'm asking a serious question why are you talking about toys? Is it because for supervillains getting their hands on Iridium is child's play? Also, why would tinkers go to a specific location for toys it doesn't make any sense because they're good with technology so they just play all their games on the internet. Or are you talking about maybe like a group of Tinkers that make a super cool video game only its not a game and when you steal money in the game you're actually stealing money in real life and that's how they get their money? Because that sounds like an awesome idea.

Wings

That sounds like a great idea only New York is really far away for the hypothetical tinker from my school project (which is not actually a real tinker but it is a thing for a school project okay.

L rd_Commander_Sand

Just wondering do you have a big wall out of sand and how do you make it keep standing up instead of falling over because that's what always happens if you build big stuff out of sand and I know its out of sand because I heard something about this guy over in Aleph that built a wall on the border with Canada out of ice which makes sense because ice is a lot like snow and that's his name. Also, how would a wall of sand help keep Moose out of the country?

brickrobot789

How the fuck does an entire dimension fit into your pockets a person i learned about in a school project did the calculations and you'd need something bigger or have like giant pockets like MC Hammer in his giant pants.

aberranting

Doesn't that mean every tinker is a bomb tinker? would a bomb tinker just be a tinker who couldn't build anything else? Is this guy I heard about in a different city called Leet turning into an explosion tinker? I need to know for a school project!

Also, if I understand Wikipedia correctly then alpha decay is when stuff turns into energy, if stuff turns into energy but the stuff is stuff made by a cape and disappears after a couple of hours does the energy then disappear too? so, like, if you used it to heat up hot choco and then the stuff disappeared would your choco suddenly be cold? Because someone I know absolutely hates hot choco.

 **► Fibber_Biver**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Ladies and gentlemen the troll has arrived

 **► Aberranting**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Not_A_Criminal

Pretty sure Leet's a specialist bomb tinker with the caveat that it fails to work properly (as a bomb) the first time he builds it, and does something else randomly instead. Pretty crippling, poor guy.

Your second question is confusing. Typically, when a cape "Creates" stuff, like a blaster shooting laser beams, the effects of the stuff they create remains after the stuff dissipates, otherwise, what, cars would magically get put back together right after being shot? Also, what on earth does Hot Coco have to do with anything? Is that some kinda euphemism?

 **► Artichoker**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Not_A_Criminal

Take a look at Megabyte from back in '04. He only stole computers. Not sure if that's because it's all he wanted to steal, or if it's all he got around to stealing before he, well, exploded mysteriously.

 **► Tin_Mother** (Moderator)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

As a reminder for everyone in this conversation, both planning criminal activities and suggesting that other people are criminals, are against the rules.

 **► Not_A_Criminal** (Original Poster)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Aberranting

What is so weird about hot choco? Do you not like it? Are you secretly a lizard-person or something?

 **► Dragon** (Verified Cape) (The Guild) (Protectorate)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Generally speaking, most Tinkers either join the Protectorate or another such organization, or get press-ganged into a criminal enterprise. The few that do stay on their own, Blasto in Boston for example, often find that their need for supplies drives them into criminal action. While the experiments he wants to do are not necessarily illegal or dangerous to the populace, the need for resources pulled him into a life of crime. So, for your school project, I suggest you make a clear overview of the pros and cons of joining the Protectorate or the wards, versus going into a life of crime to support your tinkering.

I myself am proof that, when correctly nudged, the Protectorate can be very generous with resources

 **► Redneck_Burmese_Kermit**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

I do believe that the protectorate loans out small amounts of resources to rogue tinkers who register, so your hypothetical tinker could ask them.

Winged_One

HOW DID YOU FIND ME AGAIN?

 **► LORD_DOOMITRON** (Verified Cape)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

IF IT IS A PARTICULARLY RICH HIGH SCHOOL THEN THEY COULD HAVE SOME. AS FOR THE WAITING BIT, MOST NEW TINKERS START OUT USING HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES FOR THEIR MATERIALS. I BUILT MY FIRST STASIS GUN OUT OF A MICROWAVE AND A WATER PISTOL. 

**End of Page. 1,** **2**

 **(Showing Page 2 of 2)**

 **► Swordmaster**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Fire alarms contain trace amounts of nuclear material. It is possible to literally transform an element into another element by alchemy, by which I mean nuclear reactions or nuclear decay.

I guess it's possible that tinkers are bullshit enough to make a mini nuclear reactor or something to turn elements into other elements.

Also, Iridium is naturally abundant at the geological boundary between the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, in the exact spot where the dinosaurs turn extinct.

Aside from that, a bunch of semi-precious stones are actually compounds of metals and other stuff, so our purely hypthetical tinker would have to...rob a jewelry store.

 **► The_Omega**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Iridium is fairly common anywhere a largish meteor had impacted, it's only rare because it doesn't occur naturally on Earth except in extremely uncommon circumstances, if at all.

 **► Dingus_Dongus**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Best way to get cobalt is probably from rare earth magnets. Not the neodymium kind they sell everywhere in stores, the ones in old hard drives. A 1990s era harddrive could have roughly 20$ of samarium–cobalt magnets in it, and be picked up used for next to nothing, especially since you don't need working ones. Each harddrive could get you a few grams of cobalt, though separating the samarium would be a pain - the whole point of SmCo magnets is how temperature stable they are.

Plus, you get lots of other fun little bits from old harddrives, like tiny little high RPM motors!

Iridium would be a royal PITA to get if you need it in any real volume or purity. It's not hard to get trace amounts in various metal alloys, but separating it out again would be... challenging. The world only goes through around a dozen tons of the stuff a year, but trying to buy a pure chunk of it would be like trying to buy a similar weight of gold - doable, but expensive. Ofc, people are much more likely to ask questions about Iridium, whereas lots of people buy gold.

Omega

This isn't quite correct - Iridium occurs naturally in earth. Just like all the platinum-group metals, it's just rather dense, and likes to hang out with Iron, so they tend to sink towards the core, especially during early earth. Earth has plenty of Iridium, you just can't really get to it.

 **► The_Great_Munchkin** (Verified Infokinetic) (Verified Eldrazi) (Verified no you're not)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

For the power source, if I were a Tinker I'd probably be able to build a mass canceller around a pair of accelerators. Assuming their mass was cancelled and they travelled in vacuum, twin pellets of heavy ice could be accelerated to relativistic speeds near-instantaneously with negligible energy expenditure. Set on a collision course with each other at a point right outside the accelerators, the pellets would undergo inertial confinement fusion upon impact, producing gamma radiation that could be collected as energy through either a basic steam engine (meh) or the photolelectric effect. Just remember that fusion reactions of light elements produce roughly a 6-megaton explosion per ton of fusion fuel, so if you have ice pellets of around 1 gram in your microfusion reactor, the resulting explosion would equal 6 tons of TNT. My suggestion would be to use really small pellets - unless you're building an Orion drive system or something.

For rare earth minerals, common soil will do if you have enough energy. The Curies refined uranium out of it just fine, and with enough energy you could just perform fractional distillation on it.

 **► Shadow Jaeger**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Well, depending on what you need, typically it'd be simple. Go to electronics store or other general store offering item, buy or otherwise obtain it, bring it back to base, and Tinker the Shit out of it.

Rare minerals like Iridium, well, that's easy to find, if you know what it's used in and have some time to kill. Iridium can be found in fun things like spark plugs, particularly aviation ones, for instance.

 **► Wavelength** (Shipper extraordinaire)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

I...wow NAC, can you be any more obvious? This is just so sad that I feel almost obligated to pitch in. A lot of what you are looking for can already be found in consumer-grade electronics. For the up and coming Tinker on a budget, you might consider keeping an eye on your local corporations. Any reasonably well run corp is going to do tech refreshment constantly. Some will then donate their old computers and printers and other peripherals, some will return if they were only rented, and some will just junk them. That last category is something you can exploit, since you just need components or raw materials and don't need particularly high end stuff.

 **► Lord_Mnementh** (Verified Vulcan) (Guy Not In The Know)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

*dons his tin-foil hat*

Nice to see criminals are finally trying to hide their evil ways, but I can see through you Not_A_Criminal! Your villainous plan to make us think you're harmless will never succeed!

Oh, and you can get cobalt by extracting it from cobalt glass: Extraction of heavy metal ions from waste colored glass through phase separation

You can also extract other metals from other colored glass as well, you just need to find out what color glass comes from what added metal.

 **► Sealord3000** (Shipper:literally) (Verified Rogue State)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

I saw this posted in the Best of PHO Board and just had to respond, first of all congratulations NAC on choosing the illustrious path of the inventor.

You are very likely in a place all us creative types were when we first started, and I would be remiss if I didn't give you the advice I wish someone had given me when I first felt the calling.

1\. Create a list of every known parahuman in your city, PHO can be a great way to get the lay of the land (or sea in my case), pay attention to what you could make if you wanted evade that cape/group. Do not forget to include any meddling state authority, you would be surprised how quickly you may end up on the wrong side of the law Even with the best of intentions.

2\. Resources: obviously from your post you are already thinking about this. My advice is to stop and consider that the number one way we are discovered is by tracking likely locations that materials are supplied. Those salvage yards, recycling centres and even large hardware stores are either under surveillance or pattern matching is run against purchases. Large power drains on the network are logged and investigated, energy discharge is tracked by satellite even in 'remote' or seemingly abandoned locations.

3\. Your Workshop, you will need to travel to and from this location constantly, and due to its nature you will want it to be secured, I have found that the best results by carving out tunnels to underground bunkers from legitimate fronts or places of residence. Once you do think you have a good location be sure to consider how you would escape if you were surrounded by hostile forces. Something that has occurred to me a few times in my career despite my best efforts.

As to answering your question, my flotilla routinely processes seawater for needed elements, but for something like iridium, we use unmanned submersible drones to mine the international seabed, and despite how some countries have slandered me, according to U.N resolution 895.445 it is perfectly legal.

If that option isn't open to you, I would suggest filing to create a corporation in one of these locations as an import company under your pseudonym then order whatever you need from reputable suppliers. If you need starting capital, any working computer running a beets proxy can connect to the Toybox online store (also a great place to buy meta materials) and they will accept blueprints or documentation, paying a fair price in untraceable digital currency.

If you dislike the toybox for some reason you could also try listing your plans on one of the dark net auction houses, but do not trust Anyone you meet on there.

All the best in the future, and if you ever find the heat too much where you are, the Flotilla would welcome another visitor, we are currently moving just north of Hawaii.

 **► Not_A_criminal**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Swordmaster

So, Dinosaurs and jewerly? Is the universe trying to make supervillains more cliché?

Dingus

oooh, tiny motors. Like, Tiny enough for tiny robotic spiders? no-one would notice because no-one ever looks at spiders.

Dragon

Good that I see you here I have this really great idea for containment foam that is at the same time also invisible except I secretly know you have already invented it so why don't we ever see you using it? or is that because it's invisible so you use it but no-one can ever see it? Also, what happens when you drop some on the floor?

Munchkin

Yeah but what if you need to power source to build the mass canceller, like, hypothetically?

Wavelength

For like the fiftieth time, I"m not a criminal, seriously you people... Do I need to go message Tin_Mother again? This is basically slander.

Mnementh

Live long and prosper

Also, does that mean that people steal church windows now? you know, for the coloured glass?

Sealord

Aren't you that guy that claimed an old oil platform and said it was a nation? Do you have a pet whale? Several pet whales? Do you live inside them in a secret base? Also, do you get salty from all that seawater? and how is the internet connection in the middle of the ocean?

Also, no way I'm seriously going to talk to something called the toybox. It's a stupid name.

 **► Tin_Mother** (Moderator)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Not_A_Criminal

Given that your IP address isn't an actual, you know, IP adress, (And I'm actually rather interested in how you managed to do that!) Maybe you shouldn't complain to loudly when people think something fishy is happening. 

**End of Page.** **1** **, 2**

**Topic: Über & 1337 versus Arcadia high.**

 **In: Boards ► America ► East ► North-East ► Brockton Bay ► Happenings**

 **Brocktonite03** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)

Posted on April 15, 2010:

So, America's favourite (and only) live-streaming supervillain duo has decided to attack Arcadia. To the uninitiated, Arcadia is the school that's rumoured to house most of the local wards, so, not a great idea.

What's their goal here? Epic loot? Reputation? Sneaking into the girls locker room?

Edit: Scratch that, they seem to have planned a fake attack. A diversion for something more nefarious?

Edit 2: Scratch that again, it turns out someone else pretended to be them in a fake attack on the school.

Edit 3: And, in response to the pretend fake attack, it seems like the dynamic duo is preparing for a real attack on the school

Edit 4: Scratch that, Über's been taken down by Brockton Bay's very own Dauntless, and someone called Shadow Stalker, who is not on the wards roster. Anyone know anything about this figure? Is she a possible new recruit?(would be the third in a row, if the speculation in the Hell-Hound Thread is to be believed) Dauntless's secret teenage lover? Or a collective hallucination?

 **(Showing Page 1 of 27)**

 **► Kromagnum-ham** (Wiki Warrior)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Can confrm

hidng in bthrm atm on phone

they were on intercom

smashing sounds in the halls

 **► ONEOFUS**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Shit man you too?

 **► TwinToWin** (Veteran Member)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Wait, aren't Ü&L the ones who do everything with a video game theme?

I've played a few games in my day, but I don't recall any about breaking into high schools...

Unless this is one of those games from Japan-Aleph (shudder)

 **► Kromagnum-ham** (Wiki Warrior)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Loudspkr said game was bully, nevr plaed it. Title not mkng me hopeful.

From game wiki, prob safest near teachers since it was about avoidng them.

Bathroom loking like bad idea

 **► ONEOFUS**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Kromagnum-ham

Yeah something big just entered the mens bathrooms...

 **► SuaveTigre**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Ugh. Judging by Under&Limps """"coverage""" of Argenta's official debut, I'm guessing their end goal is to steal her gym shorts.

Welp, taking bets on who ends up arresting these morons. My money's on Triumph, but I'd hedge a bit on Glory Girl, she can cover more ground after all.

 **► AkkadianConsort** (Not a Consort)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

$50 on a random trigger.

 _ **This account had been given an infraction for gambling, also, not a cool subject to gamble about-Steel Father**_

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**(Showing Page 27 of 27)**

 **► GloryGirl** (Verified Cape) (New Wave)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

VoidCowboy

Like I said, it seems to have been just a weird out-of-control prank. I don't think claiming its all a conspiracy theory is very productive, instead, Arcadia should try to figure out they let this happen.

On the lighter side, just heard there'll be no school tomorrow while they investigate. Any suggestions on what gang to focus on on my new-found free day?

 **► Silly_Tights**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

MrFairlead

I'm just saying that's not what "Feminist reinterpretation" means to any sane, rational human being.

Besides, how would this impersonator(s) even do that? Let alone why...

Hang up your foil-dora.

GloryGirl

I've always been of the opinion that voluntary baldness and Nordic tattoos increase the punch-ability of the associated face by at least 47%.

 **► Variable_Sheep**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

All these years later, and as soon as someone says the word "Feminist" the next person says "Lustrum". It makes me suspect deliberate trolling, especially since we now know this was some elaborate prank. Meh.

I'm much more interested in this "Shadowed Stalker".

Why the terrible costume?

Was she trying for an edgy name, overshot, and landed squarely in grimderp territory?

Why is Dauntless hugging her? Are they related?

 **► Red_Head_Redemption**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Variable_Sheep

You're just too scared to do anything, at least Shadow Stalker actually fights criminals, you're just jealous of how awesome she is.

In case you hadn't noticed, Shadow Stalker is the one that's actually been keeping the streets clean.

 **► 66Reaving_Shadow66**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Someone just put the Uber/Shadow Stalker fight up on youtube. Weird, usually they put it up themselves with some editing, but this seems to be a stream-rip. Although I guess Leet would be focused on breaking out his buddy, not internet bullshit. Awesome fight though, SS is looking pretty badass, just wish she was in the wards and we'd get to see more of her. I'd love a poster or something.

 **► TwinToWin** (Veteran Member)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

66Reaving_Shadow66

Nice footage! I really want someone to make a .gif of that midair crossbow into sack-tap. Silky smooth. It should forever adorn Über's wiki page.

Though that "Shadow-Splat" thing at the end is strange! She can turn other people into shadow? That's not on the wiki!

Or, really, even typically for breakers at all, I think.

 **► Bagrat** (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

TwinToWin

Eh, Powers are weird, also, looks like she overloaded herself there, Uber stands up before she does, even though she was in a better condition beforehand.

Might just be Uber's power though. 

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**Topic: Argenta joins the wards!**

 **In: Boards ► America ► East ► North-East ► Brockton Bay ► Wards**

 **Storm26** (Original Poster)

Posted on April 12, 2010:

A new thread for Brockton Bay's newest ward. Argenta is a heavily armored electrokinetic and telekinetic. Pics of her in armorhere, Link to her inauguration here.

Edit: Pic of her in the armor's under-suit (not what you think) here, it's pretty sweet.

 **(Showing Page 7 of 7)**

 **► Canadian_Mac_Canadianface** (Unverified Cape)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

So, I guess we can all agree that this is great news for all the teenage villains in B-Bay? I mean, wowzers. (Does anyone say wowzers?)

 **► Kromagnum-ham** (Wiki-Warrior)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Canadian_Mac_Canadianface

Do we even *have* teenage villains? Like, there's... Rune? And... I'm drawing a blank here. I guess Hellhound? Though I hear she's off the street now. Plus she's only really a villain if you work at the Hannaford.

Do we have any male teenage villains? Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure we will soon now. Thanks, PRT.

In all seriousness though, thank you PRT. If not for Argenta, than at least for the decoys.

 **► Valchallah**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Kromagnum-ham

You shame the great title of Wiki-Warrior!

Have you not heard tell... of the legend of the Grue?!

But, yeah, not a lot of teenage boys running amok in BB, powered ones anyway. I'd assume their deficiencies in long term planning lead to short careers.

 **► COPPER_COPPA** (Verified Coppa)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

HEEEEELLLLLOOOO NURSE!

 **► BaldurDash**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

So the PRT is billing her as a telekinetic and an electrokinetic? Like, two different powers? That seems unlikely, don't capes usually just have one power?

Why are they trying to sell us this dual power set? Is she actually some villain they shipped in from out of state with a well known power set they're trying to conceal? Do they really think we'll fall for that?

 **► Sham82**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Baldurdash

Don't be ridiculous. The PRT doesn't just go around snatching up teenage super villains, obfuscating their identities, and trotting them out as wards.

 **► BaldurDash**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Sham82

Oh yeah? Mark my words, by August we'll see HellHound debuted as the Pink Puppy Princess, and they'll be pretending she's some kind of bio-tinker with a dog focus.

 **► TsoFly**

Replied on April 15, 2010:

So I wanted to make my mom's famous grill-steamed garlic shrimp tonight, but the store was all out of foil.

Thanks, BaldurDash!

 **► Argenta** (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on April 15, 2010:

Hi everyone!

Seven pages, just for me? wow! Amazing!

BaldurDash

I can move stuff around around after putting my electricity in it, that's why I'm a telekinetic.

As for Hellhound... 

**End of Page.** **1** **,** **2** **,** **3** **...** **5** **,** **6** **, 7**


	36. Chapter 6,1

**Chapter 6.1**  
Hard drives, car exhausts, dinosaurs, fire alarms, jewelry stores, coloured glass. Most of those should be easy to gather, and there wasn't any school today.

First, however, I needed a place to stash my supplies. Which is why I was looking around the boat graveyard. Trying to find a nice empty ship to stash my shit in.

Problem was, like half of them were stuck in the water, and not all that easy to reach. Especially not if I had to bring stuff. Maybe it'd be better to just find an abandoned building somewhere, in a place no-one ever noticed.

Eventually, wandering around the shitty part of town, I found a building I could use. The area of town it was located in was called the docks, the building I had my eyes on looked like it had been abandoned for a while, and there was a window on the second floor I could climb up to without entering through the front door. It was hard, but I managed to stack a few dumpsters and somehow climb up. It didn't even hurt too much, my limbs were almost healed. Once inside, I looked around. It seemed to have been some sort of office once, given the dust-covered cubicles. No-one had even attempted to clean it out, there were old chairs, paper, lots of stuff. No computers though, not on this floor. I wasn't sure whether that was because they had been removed, or because the place was so old they didn't have computers when it was made.

No typewriters either. That was too bad, I'd always wanted to know how to make that little ding sound.

Sneaking through the dust, I eventually found the stairs down, and figured out why no-one had entered the building. The entire bottom floor was covered in old police tape, there were a lot of gouges in the ground, what looked like acid had eaten away part of the floor, and the wallpaper was shredded and torn everywhere. Part of the room looked like it had been burned. Whatever had happened here, it'd been a long time ago. It was probably older than I was, although it looked like there'd been a cape-fight. One horrifying enough that no-one had returned here after the corpses had been removed.

I could probably safely ignore this room. Plus, if I made noise, people would just think it was an angry spirit or something, and let me be. It was the perfect place for a secret base.

I made my way back up the stairs, and explored further. There was a bathroom, that might have been sort of working, I could try, but, if I tried and it turned out it didn't work, the entire base would be ruined. Instead, I looked further, seeing what I could find.

There was an office with a big couch, a place I could sleep if I needed to. You know, after I built a black-light and checked the room. It also had an old computer. Maybe old enough to have one of those hard-drives the people on the internet had told me about. Should I try to fix it? Or just scrap it for parts? I could always bring my laptop if I needed to calculate or program something.

That was about it for the second floor, so there was only one more to go.

The third floor contained a few more cubicles, a big office with a massive desk chair, probably leather or something, and a small kitchen place. I checked, it wasn't stocked, unless you counted the cobwebs

I decided it would do, and grabbed one of my power tools, it was time to transform those cubicles into a workspace.

*** Gadget ***

It had been a lot of exhausting work, but I was done by the time dad called, asking when I was coming home for dinner. I informed him I'd start on my way home, and would be there in half an hour.

I looked back at my new workshop, an array of tables making a massive workbench, I'd fixed up this shitty place enough to make sure I could get started on the materials, I even cleaned the massive chair, on which I could sit, twirling around and stroking my evil goatee, you know, if I had one of those.

I went back to the broken window I'd used to enter, and worked my way down. It was slightly harder than getting up, but whatevs. My journey out of the docks was uneventful. It was still light out, and the drug dealers weren't even around yet.

I'd need something to protect myself, or maybe just put on my helmet the next time I went to my new secret base.

Eventually, I caught the bus back, and realized that I'd completely wasted my day without getting any tinkering done.

Sure, I"d managed to set up a base… but I really wanted to start working.

Well, tomorrow would be Saturday, so I could get shit done then. 

The Boston zoo was nice, I had to admit, the meerkats were utterly adorable, the lions were properly ferocious but also lazy, the penguins had amazing little suits, and the monkeys were very good at throwing shit at the other guests.

It wasn't the same as getting my tinker on, but I had something better. I had my dad in the insect department.

"Dad, look, tarantulas!"

He averted his eyes a bit, and stepped forward slowly, trying to overcome his fear.

"Why is it fuzzy? I thought only mammals had hair, that's what the biology book said."

"They're not really hairs, they're a defence mechanism. Those hairs are called urticating hairs, they irritate the skin of whatever touches them."

"So, like cactuses?"

"Yeah, although the proper word to use in this situation is cacti"

"Cuz its Latin?"

"I think so, yes."

I ran on to the next room of the terrarium. The tarantulas, and dad overcoming his fear, had been fun, but they weren't as cool as the snakes. I absently wondered if I should ask for a snake for my next birthday. It'd be really cool, and I could spam Emma with snake pictures which would freak her out, but having to feed it mice all the time didn't seem like a good idea. Although, maybe I could sneak one into my gadgetspace, although… what if it didn't work? Or it'd be the same every time it came out? It seemed like something horrible to do with an animal, especially a cute little snake in front of me, licking at the glass in front of my face.

Still, they had a python here, behind the thick glass. Just lounging around. Dad was walking even slower now. Was he more afraid of snakes than insects?

*** Armsmaster ***

Colin could only wish he'd thought about this before taking Sely on a road-trip to the zoo.

Sure, he'd gotten the entire day off, and Sely probably needed something to cheer her up after what had happened at school, but snakes…

When he saw how tired she'd been after coming home yesterday, he'd decided to bring her here. He'd always like the zoo as a kid, and Sely looked to be enjoying herself.

The problem was that the spiders reminded him of a villain he'd once fought. A biokinetic striker that could greatly increase the size of any animal he touched, and gained a slight amount of control over them.

One giant spider had been okay, a hundred of them though…

The snakes were worse, they just reminded him of the massive worm Blasto had brought the one time he'd visited Brockton Bay for a trip. He'd had to fight his way out from the inside, which, while making for a great story, had also gotten him to be absolutely covered in slime and worm guts. It'd taken him a day to get all the gunk out of his armour.

But, it looked like Sely was happy, so remembering the bad stuff was a small price to pay. And he'd won those battles, he could make his way through the terrarium.

"So, Sely, do you want to talk about what happened Thursday?"

She looked at him, her grey-green eyes showing his reflection in them.

"Dunno…" she went silent.

He put his hand on her head, and messed up her hair a bit. "c'mon you little whippersnapper, let's get something to eat."

They left the terrarium, and made their way to the restaurant, which had an aquarium wall. It was nice, watching the fish while eating their kin. It'd be better if he replaced the glass with a forcefield that stopped water and fish, while letting people through. It'd mean there was more of a possibility for interaction, but not everyone could build tinker-tech of that calibre.

"I hate being injured…" Sely said.

"Well you know what the doctor said, just a week and they'll remove the cast on your leg."

She sighed. She was obviously not very happy about the time-frame. He wondered again whether or not he should've asked Panacea for help, but knowing how Sely had reacted to the notion of parahumans…

They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of them knowing what to talk about.

Until he noticed someone in the crowd that he recognized. A woman he'd known for quite some time, almost since he'd joined the protectorate.

Mouse Protector was on the prowl, and it'd only be a matter of seconds until she-

"Hey Colin, long time no see!" her voice echoed through the lunch restaurant. Kate had no idea about the concept of indoor voices, in or out of costume.

Sely looked in her direction, "Who's that?"

"Someone I used to work with, we went to college together for a while." He replied. Not telling her that, unlike the others, he'd decided not to pursue a full college education while hero-ing. None it actually helped him with his powers, and the engineering classes had been rather boring.

"Hey now beardsley, who's this little squirt?" Kate said, pretending not to know about Sely.

"I'm not a squirt!" she replied.

Kate had grabbed a chair from somewhere. And had started stealing his fries.

Sely, determined not to be out-done, had decided to go for his food as well.

This was why he never visited Boston…

"So, how'd you find us anyway?" he asked. It couldn't be a coincidence, but then again, he hadn't informed anyone in Brockton where he was going, except that he'd be in Boston.

He'd need to have a word with Assault…

"You know, I guess I just had a hunch!"

Her thinker, that explained a lot.

"So, squirt, what do you think about elephants?"

"They're okay, I gotta say I prefer giraffes though."

"Yeah, giraffes are pretty cool. Didya know a local villain named Blasto made a giant giraffe once?"

"A giant giraffe? How'd that work?"

"Not all that well, there's a reason he only ever made the one. It kept falling over, with legs taller than most buildings. Its neck was cool though, it could twist it into all kinds of shapes, kind of like a balloon animal!"

Collin suddenly remembered the attack, and the subsequent backlash against Mouse Protector from animal rights groups. It had been one of Blasto's less effective plans. Also plants, the giraffe, like almost everything else Blast made, had been at least partly plant.

"So, why'd you ask about the elephants?" Sely asked, being the one to bring a conversation back on-topic for once.

"Well, I happen to know one of the zookeepers, and I just might be able to con him into letting you help feed them!"

Colin wasn't sure what to think. The girls, that is, Sely, Mouse Protector, and the twenty something zookeeper, were all busy playing with a baby elephant in the middle of the inside enclosure, a place normally forbidden to guests. He was leaning against a large iron bar, checking his mail on his phone.

There was another complaint from the youth guard about Argenta's behavior, a status report from Battery, stating that she thought Rachel would be ready for her first patrol tonight, a quick overview of the current status of the gangs, a request for Iridium and Cobalt by Kid Win, who had gotten some ideas about anti-gravity and mass-cancellation and wanted to test them, and a memo from Dragon about upcoming Endbringer attacks.

Behemoth had struck the C.U.I. in January, and been driven back after Scion interfered. That meant the next attack would be the Simmurgh, or perhaps Leviathan. Dragon speculated that the next strike would be somewhere in Europe, and he agreed, based on his prediction program. It had been a simple time-wasting project, nothing serious, but he'd correlated atmospheric data, seismic activity, and crime statistics, and been able to come relatively close to predicting Endbringer attacks in retrospect.

He still wasn't sure on what to do. Everything he believed him screamed at him to fight the beasts, to drive them back for the sake of humanity. But, when he looked at his daughter.

If he died. It'd be like failing her all over again. Leaving her all alone in the world, with nothing but a brain-damaged mother that hated her, blaming her for all that had gone wrong.

But would Sely want a father that was too afraid to do what needed to be done? If he died fighting an Endbringer, at least she could be proud of him. And he knew what the survival rates were like. Sure, they were low, for first-timers. Experienced people, capes that had fought all of them before, they tended to do better.

Plus, he'd have an excuse to see dragon again, not over a computer, but in the flesh, or steel in her case. Sure, it was still remote-control, but it was somehow more real.

… Except he'd made a promise to Sely, about what he'd do the next time he met her. He could file her virtual presence away as not being real, but her mech-suits…

How the hell did you ask a twelve-feet-tall robot out for coffee?

His thought process was interrupted by a trunk sniffing at his ears. He looked behind him, and saw a rather large elephant bull at the other side of the massive iron bars, that had taken an interest in him. He looked at the beasts eyes, and saw that it was looking at Sely and the elephant puppy, who were now almost rolling over the floor.

"Kids huh." He said. The beast snorted in agreement

When they left, it was nearing closing time, the zookeeper told them to go ahead, she'd lost the keys somewhere and needed to close up. Colin looked at Sely, she didn't have anything in her pockets she hadn't had before, and there were no outlines visible in her sling either. Hannah had probably just been paranoid, and perhaps slightly annoyed at Sely's apparent dislike of her.

Kate left them on the way back to the car, stating work issues. Colin checked his phone a final time, and noticed a report flagged important. He skimmed through the message. It turned out that some of the small players in the city had united. Trainwreck, Grue, Circus, and two unidentified figures had struck a jewelry store, taking both what was on display, and the more valuable things in the safe. Strange, that they had gotten access to it so easily. Luck? An applicable power? Or was it an inside job?

No-one had gotten hurt though, so it could wait until tomorrow.

"Dad?" Sely mumbled, she was getting sleepy

"Yes?"

"Today was fun."


	37. Chapter 6,2

**Chapter 6.2**  
April 21, 2010

*** Bitch ***

For the third time this week, Rachel was rushing through the streets, feeling the wind in her hair, sheer joy almost overwhelming her and her dogs.

Houses and storefronts and alleys rushed by to the left and right, but she didn't even need to pay attention, Rex knew the way. Sitting behind her, Jessica, no, Battery right now, held her tightly, almost like she was afraid to fall off. Rachel couldn't check whether or not she was, she had to keep her eye on the road. Battery had been very clear about not hitting cars.

In front of her were Rex and Officer Daniels. Daniels was new too. He used to work with the DEA, and now he and his dog, Rex, had joined up with the PRT. A green rectangle was drawn around him on her visor, accompanied by a little smiling face, and a line with a few words. It was hard to read, but the little face told her enough.

On the left, were Judas and Assault. Assault also had a big smiley face next to his rectangle. They were having fun, jumping around. Assault was using his powers to make the two of them move weird, and Judas was enjoying the experience.

Eventually, Rex stopped in front of a person on a street corner, and started barking softly. Rex was still getting used to barking while big, and Daniels didn't want him to make too much noise.

An orange rectangle appeared around the other man. Orange meant he was an enemy, but she couldn't attack him. If the man grabbed a weapon, he'd turn red. The little face next to him was blue, with an expression that she quickly remembered meant that he was scared. Rachel checked the little line of text. One of the words, she was quite sure, also said scared.

Daniels dismounted, and started talking to the guy, arresting him, searching him. "Probable cause" was the important thing here, Jessica had said. The fact that Rex smelled drugs meant they had that, and they could arrest and search the man without any problems.

While Daniels was talking to the man, and Battery was standing by in order to make sure the man didn't do anything stupid, Rachel dismounted, and looked over Brutus.

He looked happy, running around all night. In a few minutes, someone would come by to pick up the drug dealer. Then, they would mount up again, Rex would try to pick up something new, and they'd run towards the next arrest. That pattern would repeat, and after catching about ten guys, they'd call it a night and go home. Daniels and Rex would leave, and she'd go back to the Rig with Ethan and Jessica. She'd jump on the couch with Brutus and Judas, turn on the tv for some useless noise, and fall asleep.

"You okay to handle this on your own Daniels? We've got a call nearby, Undersiders." Jessica suddenly said, one hand to her ear.

On the bottom of her visor, a small picture of Battery appeared, with a line of text next to it. She didn't take the time to read it, but she knew what it said. What mattered was the colour, green. That meant it was true. Or, at least, that it Battery thought it was true.

"Sure, go ahead, Rex'll stay big for a bit. Right Hellhound?" he replied. Also green, with a little bit of blue at the end. A question, she already knew this from the structure of the sentence. Sometimes, however, people would ask a question that could also be a sentence.

Rachel nodded. She still didn't like the new name, it was stupid and ridiculous. But that didn't really matter if it meant she got to run around town all night.

Battery jumped back on top of Brutus, and gestured for her. As Rachel jumped up, she started talking.

"So, the Undersiders just attacked an office building, 7th Lord Street is the address, you up for this?" She asked. Still green, still with some blue for the last few letters.

"Yeah" Rachel replied. It looked like things were going to be exciting. She put her hand on the button at the inside of her visor. "Navigation, Lord Street 7" She said. A blue line was suddenly overlaid on the road, and an arrow appeared at the top of her vision. She squeezed her legs a bit. "Brutus, Judas, Go" she said, steering Brutus in the right direction. Judas would follow

"Rooftops?" she asked Battery, who had once again put her arm around Rachel's waist.

"Not yet, no-one got hurt so far." Green. True.

Three minutes later, they stood before a large, completely black, cloud. It was weird, almost liquid, no light coming from it. The entire street was covered.

"Spread out, check for changes? Herd them like a sheepdog?" Assault asked. This time, the entire text was blue. Only a question. Rachel wasn't sure how to answer, was it a question for her, or for Battery?

Battery jumped down, landing on the ground. "Sounds good. Rachel, you up for this?"

Rachel nodded. The plan made sense. She didn't want to enter the black cloud if she didn't have to, and whoever was inside would have to come out sometime. If they ran circles around it, they'd probably be too scared to run.

"It's rooftop time Rachel, remember, call us the moment you see something." Battery said.

Rachel nodded again, and motioned for Brutus to jump upwards two floors, and further up from there. Judas and Assault went in the other direction.

It didn't take long before she saw Assault and Judas again, everything combined, it hadn't been that big an area covered in darkness. Ethan nodded to her, and they continued their circling, trying to find a weak spot in the cover. Every now and then, a big wave of darkness would come rolling forwards into one street or another, slowly expanding the covered territory, but she didn't think the Undersiders would've ran. There were quite a few of them, and there weren't many onlookers. Brutus or Judas would have noticed.

Eventually though, she heard Judas bark at something, followed by Ethan's voice in her ears.

"Guys, I think we're patrolling in the wrong dimension" he said. Rachel wasn't quite sure what that meant, and apparently, neither was Battery.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" she replied.

"Just look up, is Dauntless available?"

Rachel looked up, above the big cloud of darkness. In the middle, a black spire was rising higher and higher, covering whoever was in it. She thought about it, trying to remember what she'd been told about these people.

The darkness was Grue, a teenager in motorcycle leathers.

Then there was Circus, who did fire, and Trainwreck, who could make himself really strong. Could he make himself fly? Maybe.

So it was probably one of the two they didn't know anything about. She remembered the pictures, which was about all there was to know. One of them looked like a bad version of one of the people from the old-timey movies Jessica watched. The other was a girl that, much like Grue, was dressed in motorcycle leathers.

Problem was, given the darkness floating around, it was almost impossible to see how they were flying.

"Just got word from the console. Dauntless is on the other side of the city, and Aegis is asleep." Battery said.

"Can we go in? Maybe the dogs can smell them." Rachel said.

This sucked. She sort of looked forward to this, an actual fight, instead of someone immediately surrendering in the face of her dogs. Now the enemy was escaping, and she couldn't do anything to stop them.

"Sure, good idea Hellhound." Assault said. The line was green. He meant it, he'd liked her idea.

She gestured for Brutus. He was nervous, at first, to enter the darkness, but eventually made his way in, sniffling around. Rachel couldn't really see anything, not even her visor. She couldn't even hear anything, and her balance was all weird. She held tightly to Brutus, who was sniffing around. Brutus's nose was good. Not as good as Rex's, but much better than that of a person. Maybe, she thought, even better now that he couldn't see or hear. She remembered watching something on TV about blind people once. The person on TV had said blind people could hear better because they didn't need to see. Maybe it worked like that with smell too?

She could ask Jessica about it, maybe she'd know. She smiled, thinking of Judas, big, using her power, wearing a tiny blindfold around his eyes. It'd be cute.

Eventually, Brutus jumped up somewhere, Rachel braced herself for the impact of shattering glass, which didn't come. She couldn't hear it of course, but…

Brutus had decided he'd found the most interesting smell around. She squeezed her legs to the back, signalling for him to sit and not touch anything, and dismounted.

After several minutes, the darkness receded, and she saw what Brutus had found. The window he'd jumped through had already been broken by someone, and when she looked closely, there was some blood on it.

"Good boy Brutus" she said, and her hand went to her earpiece. "Found some blood here."

*** Dauntless ***

Roger was flying around the area between the boardwalk and the docks, the shady, but not too shady, part of town.

Shadow Stalker's turf.

He looked at his watch again. It was past midnight now, but he still hadn't spotted her. She was usually around on Wednesdays. It was the Mondays and Thursdays that she generally didn't go out on.

He needed to talk to her, which was why he was looking for her. Yesterday, someone had been brought in at a local hospital. A gang member, although they couldn't prove it, with an arrow through his gut. He'd made it, after spending a couple of hours in the ICU, but Piggot hadn't been too happy about it. Or, he thought, she had been happy about it. Another arrow in her metaphorical quiver, something she could use in pursuit of her goals.

Piggot was still very much a soldier, seeing everyone who was not the PRT as the enemy. Even the Protectorate sometimes. She could have long drawn out verbal fights with Armsmaster, trying to get more control over the wards. This time, she wanted to use the wounded mean as a means to get power over Stalker, and he'd have to be the one to do it.

He'd never really liked this part of the job. The intricate plans, the deceit and politicking. He was more of a straight-forward guy. Give him a job, and he'd get it done. Now, however, he had to go against his job. Instead of trying to help out little Stalker, he had to, at the same time, double-cross her. He hated it, even though he could understand why it needed to be done. In the end, bringing in Stalker would be better for her. It would mean he could help her in her civilian life.

He didn't know much, but, every now and then, the young girl had dropped some small details. Her home life wasn't very good, she disliked her brother, and she didn't have all that many friends. She had a sport she really liked, although he wasn't quite sure what, and she got frustrated because her parents either didn't have the money for good gear, or just wouldn't pay for it.

She'd recently started high-school, which, for Brockton Bay, put her at fourteen years old. She'd said she liked it, but he wasn't quite sure, she'd gotten more… abrasive… since the beginning of the school year. It didn't seem to be a good environment for her. But, again, he couldn't actually do anything about it.

He thought about Battery for a moment, and their newest ward. Unlike with Argenta, they hadn't really made a big media spectacle out of stuff like her first patrol. Instead, they'd simply informed the media that they'd caught about twenty big-time dealers and rolled up a safehouse in the span of two days with the help of their newest ward, answering questions only sparingly. They were on patrol right now, taking a bite out of drug crime. The girl had been, if not happy, then at least content with her new parents.

He scanned the rooftops again, and saw a moving shadow. He pulled himself downward through his boots, landing in front of her like he'd done so often.

"What?" she said, sounding slightly annoyed with him, as always.

"Good evening Shadow Stalker, how you feeling?" he replied.

She looked away from him, holding one hand in the other.

"m'alright…"

He wasn't quite sure what that meant, but it was probably alright. She hadn't sworn in two sentences, which was a good sign, short as the sentences were.

"Do you want to take a seat?" he said, gesturing to the railing of the roof they were on. "There's something we need to talk about."

She looked nervous, more so than usual, but took a seat anyway. He followed, sitting down next to her, but giving her some personal space. Her stomach made a sound, and she turned her head a bit in embarrassment.

"You hungry? I got some snacks with me if you want some." He said, taking two candybars from his pockets, and holding one out for little Stalker. She moved her position on the railing to grab it, getting a bit closer than she needed to, and started munching away on it without fully removing the hockey-mask.

"There was a guy in the hospital yesterday, spend some time in the ICU…" he said as she was settled in.

It looked like Stalker was thinking for a bit, taking her time eating as an excuse to remain silent. "Oh, him…" she said, acknowledging what had happened.

"Look, I know it may seem unfair, but this can't keep happening. One of these days, someone is going to die."

She put the remaining half of the candy-bar on the railing beside her, and folded her arms.

He sighed. "What happened?"

"I dropped down… and the little fuck surrendered, but then, when I turned around. He fucking shot me. Twice." She answered, looking at him again.

"Did you get hurt?" he asked, genuinely worried.

Her eyes drifted down again. "No… but…"

"I know it's hard, but we're supposed to be better than them."

"Fckin stupid…"

"Look Stalker, just… let me help you, okay?"

"They're a bunch of fucking pussy babies anyway…" she retorted, already knowing where the conversation was going.

"I don't know Stalker, the new girl, Argenta, she's pretty badass. And I wouldn't call anyone that can keep going after losing an arm a pussy."

She went silent for a few seconds again before replying. "I guess… Win's an idiot though. And Triumphs a stuck up ass."

"Well, I can't argue against that one, but, you haven't even really met the others have you now? Come on, I'll set up a meeting for you. You'll see it's not that bad, and I bet you'd love having a team to rely on."

"Maybe…" she replied, retreating into the whole 'silent and brooding' shtick. He wasn't going to get further with her like this, whether Piggot liked it or not. At least he'd gotten her to admit she didn't think Aegis was a total fuck-up. Baby step after baby step.

He grabbed another of his cards from a pocket, and handed it to her. "You have my number, okay. You can call me whenever you want, whether it is about meeting the wards, or just if you need to talk to me after a bad day at school."

"Okay…" she replied, taking the card before standing up. Then, she jumped of, shrouding herself in shadows.

It was, all in all, a good talk. Sure, Piggot would be pissed. Armsmaster would probably also be pissed, but he was pretty sure that he was getting to her. It was just slow but steady, just how he liked it.

*** Gadget ***

April 22, 2010

I looked over my workspace. A few days ago, it had been squeaky clean. Right now, it was absolutely covered in dismantled old computer parts.

Not because I needed the processing power. Just because I needed the parts. The components them self.

Breaking into the dump had been easy, the real problem had been trying to find the good stuff. I hadn't figured out yet how to get everything, maybe order some online somehow, but I'd need cash, or maybe just steal a meteor. I had solved the power issue, or at least, part of the power issue. I'd figured out some way to temporarily store massive amounts of electrical power, which would quickly dissipate over the span of an hour or so. Problem was, I needed to get the power in there, and I wasn't quite sure if the electrical outlets at home would work. Mostly because I wasn't quite sure if stuff would set itself on fire. Probably not, but maybe.

I'd also managed to steal some old coloured glass, which gave me several rare minerals, which would work unless I needed a lot of them. Jewelry could work, there was some stuff in a few gemstones that could definitely replace the iridium for my plans. That was why, for the past few days, I'd send out my drones, scouting out jewelry stores in the area. It was a bit problematic, because a new gang called the Undersiders had robbed one while I had been in the zoo with my dad, so there was a bit of extra security everywhere, but it'd probably all work out once I found the best target.

That was one of the best things about Brockton Bay, I could actually pick and choose my target instead of the whole city just having one of everything.

My phone rang, Emma. I looked at the time, she'd probably just gotten of patrol, that meant she wanted to hang out. I accepted the call.

"Hello there, you have reached the Argenta fan hotline, how can I help you?" I answered. Almost immediately, she got all flustered.

"Sely, I… I mean Argenta, doesn't have an official fan hotline… yet."

"Oooh? You making plans?"

"Not really. But, you know, I heard the poster is selling pretty well."

"You get any of that mad dosh?"

"Some, but, it's all going in my college fund."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh, so, whatsup?"

"Just wondering… can I come over for dinner?"

"Your mom's making what she says is lasagne again?"

"No, they're out of the country for a bit, and my brother is hanging out with one of his new friends, and, y'know, don't feel like eating in the headquarters."

"I'll ask dad. It'll probably be take-out though… he's working late today."

"I know. You know what, I'll ask him instead, he's in the building right now. I'll send you a message when I have an answer."

"Ok, sure. See ya!"

"See ya!"

I hung up, thinking about the conversation. My dad worked for the PRT, he did some consultancy work or something. Weird hours, good pay. It's why he had met Emma back in Westlake, when she'd been recruited to the wards.

I finished up my work, the last I'd be doing one-handed. Tomorrow, we'd return to the hospital, and they'd remove the casts. That meant I could get my hands on some precious gems this weekend, after selecting a proper target.

The Thai food was good, the company was good, and the TV-show was good. Only, Emma kept sending the conversation in weird directions. Directions I wasn't entirely comfortable with. She knew I had some sort of powers, and I was also pretty sure she knew that I didn't want to tell my dad.

As for why I didn't want to tell my dad…

It just… It had been an amazing month, even though I hadn't even been able to walk properly, and had to do all my homework. Dad was smart, and more importantly, he took me seriously when I had a question, real or joking. He actually explained how things really worked, even if it was ridiculously complicated. And although he was often really busy with work, he did make time to go out and do fun stuff. It was amazing to hear him yell at his boss in the middle of a museum.

If he found out I had these weird powers… what if he didn't want me anymore? What if he hated me, like mom… Like John, or Gustav… Gustav had been fun, we'd gone hunting together, and I got to shoot a squirrel. It was kind of sad, but also cool, and he'd taxidermist'd it. Mom had thrown it out after they'd broken up…

"Sooo, Sely, what's your biggest secret? C'mon, you already know mine." Emma asked. Another one of the questions obviously pointing at her wanting me to tell my dad.

"Well. I didn't want anyone to know, but… I actually do believe it's not butter." I replied.

"Awww, come one! What about you Mister Wallis?"

Dad thought about it for a second before replying. "Well, back in college, a crazy person drew a comic about me and a friend being gay together."

Well… that was most certainly a secret.

I thought about it for a second. My dad, in college, gay. That would've been after I was born. "Someone I know?" I asked. This was interesting.

"Don't think so, though I have to introduce you to him someday. We used to be best buds, although we drifted apart a bit after college. Hard to hang out when you're in different parts of the country."

"Oh…" I replied. Emma was also listening eagerly.

"So what about you Emma?" I asked her.

"Pretty sure you both know already." She replied.

"What about second biggest?" I asked again.

She thought about it for a second, before whispering into my ear: "Aegis is secretly hotter than Triumph."

I laughed, typical Emma. Boys boys boys.

We were silent for a bit, watching the TV-show. It was a sci-fi thing from England. Or, well, technically Sci-fi, but it didn't really make sense. The main character was a weird tinker that was also an alien or something, and half of it was just plain magic, more so than normal powers.

Eventually, Emma broke the silence. I'd almost forgotten that she was one of those people who automatically thought any silence was uncomfortable.

"So, what about you Mister Wallis, are there any girls you like? Or maybe dudes?"

He snorted, a bit of rice coming out of his nose.

"You meet Miss Richter yet? You remember your promise right?" I added onto it.

He got a little bit red. "She's uhm… she's in Canada right now. Should be back in a month or two."

Emma turned to me. "Miss Richter?"

"Uh-huh, she's real good at video-games."

I saw her thinking about it. Was she wondering about who Miss Richter actually was? It wasn't like I knew much about her, except for that she had great taste in movies, was good at games, was fun to talk with, and also my dad was in love with her. And she was Canadian. Maybe I could get Emma to help me set them up.

Maybe Miss Richter was secretly a cape. One with Video-game skills, and magic movie suggestion powers.

She turned back to my dad. "Do I know her?"

"Don't think so, I'll introduce you to her when she's back." He replied to Emma.

Suddenly, everyone's attention was back on the screen. The little salt-shaker alien had suddenly started floating up the stairs. Scientifically wrong as it was, the show could be kind of fun.


	38. Chapter 6,3

**Chapter 6.3**  
April 23, 2010

"Well, everything is looking good. They'll be a bit weaker than usual, seeing as you haven't used them for a while, but there's no scarring, and everything's healed." The doctor said.

I couldn't believe what I heard. Finally, I could use all my limbs again. Brockton Bay beware, because Gadget is back!

I started walking around the room. It felt weird, and one leg was just a bit smaller than the other, but everything was pretty much okay. There wasn't too much scarring either. I hadn't really seen my leg much since I'd woken up in the hospital, and it wasn't looking as bad as I'd expected. The anti-scarring cream they had was apparently quite good.

Dad was talking to the doctor about something that was probably unimportant, so I checked my phone. No new messages since I last checked ten minutes ago. Now, who could I annoy into entertaining me? Emma? I was pretty sure she was on patrol right now, so hilarious as that would be, she probably couldn't reply immediately.

Someone back in Westlake? They probably sat around on their asses all day there, probably didn't even have the school back up. But, then again, most of them were boring backwater losers. I lived in the big city now, things were important here.

Someone from Arcadia then? Maybe I could tease Chris with Emma's phone number. It took a complete idiot not to see that he was into her. Or maybe someone else?

My question was answered by a single message from Emma. "I hate pre-schoolers". An understandable sentiment. Pre-schoolers were messy, tiny, and probably didn't even make good minions. Not, generally, what I expected though.

I texted back, and attached a picture of my now freed leg. "Can't share in the pain."

In return, I got another picture, one of her head, with helmet on, and a little kid pulling her hair. The wards were weird, playing around with children all day.

Eventually, dad finished talking to the doctor, and we started on our way home. He'd drop me off, and return to work for something. I wasn't quite sure what, but it meant I had the rest of the day to myself. More than that, he'd said he might be having to pull an all-nighter on some program or something, which meant I could go out without him noticing.

*** Argenta ***

"You're so lucky…" Argenta said.

"What!" the new girl replied. Emma enjoyed that, no longer being the new girl. Sure, she'd only been the new girl for a week or so, but it was still good not being the rookie.

"We had to go do some stupid event. The kids kept pulling my hair!"

The new girl, Hellhound, thought about it for a few seconds, before standing up and walking towards her. Then, she patted Emma's head twice, saying "There there" before turning around and sitting down again. Brutus quickly jumped on top of Rachel's lap.

Emma looked around the room. The screens noted that the next tour would be in half an hour. Chris was working on some sort of skateboard, and Gallant was manning the console, mostly texting with his girlfriend, Vicky. Aegis was playing some sort of game, Emma thought she recognized it from when she'd seen Sely play something, but she wasn't entirely sure.

"Soooo, heard you met the Undersiders. Saw anything cool?"

"No." Rachel replied.

Emma thought about it that for a bit.

"Oh, so, no cool powers on their side?"

"Dunno, couldn't see any. Everything was dark."

Emma's attention went back to her phone. Another message from Sely, this time discussing all the reasons she had for why teachers should be replaced by robots. A discussion they'd had for most of the day. Even though the logistics would be impractical, there were only a few Tinkers capable of making life-like robots, Sely's statement that no-one would notice was true.

As she was about to type something back, Rachel pushed a small book in her face, her finger pointing at one of the words.

"What's this mean?" She asked.

Emma looked at the book. It was the kind of thing she read when she was eight or nine, mostly short words without too many syllables. It seemed like Rachel was busy with her homework.

"It says migratory. It's how some birds go south for the winter, and then come back up north in the summer."

"Ok." Rachel replied, sitting back down.

Emma sighed, and looked at the clock. Twenty more minutes until the tour. After that, Patrol with Aegis. She wondered about what to do. Maybe she could accidentally fall in mid-air, and have Aegis catch her. Or maybe they'd get into a fight with some criminal, and finally learn to understand that only the power of love can defeat size-changing Nazi Viking chicks.

*** Piggot ***

"And you're sure about this? Piggot said."

The analyst nodded. "Yes ma'am, multiple sources corroborate it."

Interesting. She thought, it seemed like there was trouble in the Kaiser's court. First, there was the thing with purity last year. Now, it seemed like Holzschwert and The Boulder were striking out on their own, hopefully going to another city like Night and Fog had. Plus, it seemed like there was something going on with Rune as well.

"Very well. I think that concludes our meeting." She replied, watching the man slowly leave the room. Things were looking good for Brockton Bay. Sure, there was still a massive Neo-Nazi gang, as well as a Dragon-man ruling over half the ethnic minorities in the city, but she could start changing that.

The biggest factor there was Hellhound. The girl's abilities had been extraordinarily useful, taking about a million dollars' worth of product of the streets every night she went on patrol. Plus, right now she could actually make sure the caught dealers kept on being caught. Creative and expensive lawyers might be able to free someone that had been beaten up and left on the street by vigilantes like Shadow Stalker, but a regular arrest, based upon well-known, generally accepted types of evidence? Easy-peasy.

Best of all, the youth-guard representative that had been a thorn in her side for almost a year now had decided to go on some sort of personal crusade against Argenta, giving Piggot the room she needed to manoeuvre.

Sure, there were the undersiders, but they hadn't actually hit anything big. They were criminals, yes, but their existence didn't allow for systematic crime the way the other gangs did.

Someone knocked on the door. Battery, she knew.

"Come in." she said.

Jessica entered the room, fully in costume. "You wanted to talk about something?" she asked.

"Yes, take a seat." She replied, handing one of the analyst's files to the cape.

Battery scanned through the document before replying. "Height seems to match, thinner build can be explained by her wearing less bulky armour. And now that I think about it, the speed and acceleration seem to match. What I can't figure out is why. Last I heard, we had Grue pegged as an eighteen year old African American male. Was that wrong?"

"Perhaps, or perhaps she wasn't a true believer anyway."

"I guess. Wouldn't be the first time Kaiser recruited someone like that."

"And Hellhound, how is she settling in? Any problems?"

"It's going… alright… She's doing great at the job, but she gives her tutors a hard time."

"And the other wards?"

"Triumph doesn't like her, which we already knew beforehand, but she seems to be content being in the same room as them. I'm not sure how it will play out on a patrol, but I don't think there will be a lot of trouble. My real worries are about the PR side of things."

"Which is my job." Piggot replied. Today would be the first time the girl would be present during one of the tours. They'd see how she interacted with the public, and decide on how to handle the situation afterwards.

*** Rachel ***

People were weird, Rachel thought. Tourists most of all. Easy to handle though. All she had to do was tell Brutus and Judas to be nice and play, and they all left her alone. She didn't understand it, but whatever, her helmet informed her the guests were happy. Now, if only she could figure out how those travelling birds didn't get lost, it would be a pretty good day. Did they have powers, maybe? Or did they have a tinker who made tiny bird compasses for them? Didn't really matter anyway. They were just birds, not dogs.

She looked around, observing what was supposed to be her new pack. Chris did something at his workbench. Carlos was looking at a computer, and Emma was desperately trying to talk to him. Dean was talking to people in the crowd of tourists.

*** Gadget ***

Once again, it was time for me to go get something I needed. The jewelry store, or rather, its back door, stood before me. I'd checked a lot of them with my drones, and this seemed to be the most robable. Three cameras, an alarm system, and, since it was located on the boardwalk, a security guard shared with the neighbours. The key here would be to hit him with my sleeping ray before he spotted me.

I grabbed my helmet after checking the area one last time. I couldn't see anyone watching, even though I sure felt like it. Problem was, I still felt like someone was watching me. Maybe that was just the nerves. The last time I'd set out to rob someone…

I grabbed a looper, and fired at the camera above the back door, hitting it correctly on the first try. Then, I snuck forward, opening the back door with my key. It was dark inside, but I managed to make out the alarm system's little panel, which I'd need to check before going on.

I walked forward, not too slowly, trying to figure out the system. It was a bit complicated, and it looked like it would send a signal to some company if I didn't enter the right code.

I could try breaking it open, changing some wires around and figure out the code that way. Or…

I grabbed my looper quickly. I probably had a bit of time, but…

I entered a false code, and the screen said I had to put in the right code next time, within a minute. It'd buy me some time.

Quickly, grabbing a screwdriver, I grabbed the little chip it'd launch. Changing some stuff around quickly. The system was probably a bit simpler than a camera, so it'd be a bit easier, probably. Then, I attached it to the cable coming out of the security pad, setting the "All safe" signal to a loop.

I wasn't quite sure it'd work, but I could run quickly enough if it went wrong. The real problem was that I wouldn't be able to disable the last camera now. The camera count was the whole reason I'd chosen this target.

It meant not going to the front, and being in deep shit if the guard came in, but I could probably get what I needed just from the safe.

Sneaking forward through the hallways at the back of the store, I found my target. The store safe. Four different locks, in addition to a timer, and a camera aimed at it. The camera was almost immediately targeted. The four locks, I quickly defeated with four lockpickers as well. Planning around my inventory had been annoying, but it was nice when it worked out. I checked the back of my mind, it'd be about half an hour to an hour until I got a new one.

The timer was a bit harder, it was meant to stand up to outside interference. But that didn't really mean all that much against a tinker. I opened it up with a small drill, and looked inside, trying to figure out how it worked. The timer system was… interesting, but not all that hard to hack my way through by touching the right wires in the right patterns to the right points. The right pattern, with a little external help, and the clock thought it was time to open.

The inside of the safe looked amazing. Like a dragon's horde. A smallish dragon, without any coins, but still. I scanned my way through it, figuring out what was what stone, containing what materials. What I needed, I put in a loot bag, what I liked, I grabbed. What I didn't like, I just dropped on the floor.

There was also quite a bit of cash in there. Not as much as I'd expected, given all the digital payments in the word, but still, a nice sum. Couple thousand, probably. I grabbed it too, for good measure, before making my way out. A quick glance to the front of the store, where a few of the cheaper, but actually more usefull for tinkering, jewelry was held. It was too bad. Behind the main room, I could see the metal curtain, with a patrol behind it, streetlight and flashlights combining into a white-yellow pattern. I walked back to the back door. It seemed like the alarm was still nice and docile, stuck on a loop where it thought the door had been recently opened, and it needed a code.

I stepped outside, looking around, scanning for people. First on the floor, then, for good measure, the rooftops.

I walked forward, suddenly finding myself on top of a building. How the hell?

I checked around, behind me, down on the street, I saw the open door I'd just walked out of. Was this a new aspect of my powers? Was there some sort of crazy teleporter around? Emma had told me about a guy called Oni Lee, but he couldn't teleport other people, probably.

Looking around, I tried scanning the nearby rooftops, maybe I could see Oni Lee somewhere, or whoever was doing this.

Again, I found myself in another place. On a different building, a bit more removed from the jewelry store, but I could still see the alley behind it from here.

Checking the rest of the roof, I also saw something else. A woman was sitting on the floor next to the edge of the roof. She was wearing a black turtleneck, covering something bulky, armor? Large parts of her face were covered by a black scarf wrapped around it. On top of that, she wore a cowboy hat. One that I recognized.

I blinked, and she suddenly started standing up. I had absolutely no idea what was going on, so I quickly set my voice-changer to deep dark gritty mode.

"Well hello there." The woman said.

"Hi?" I replied. This was the person I'd seen robbing a store in the middle of the day, in the middle of a mall, without anyone coming close to stopping her. And she'd been a teleporter.

"You know, I can't help but notice that you left most of the stuff that was actually expensive lying on the floor there."

"I, what… How'd you know?" I asked. If she'd been sitting here, I'd buy that she'd seen me enter through the back door, but…

"Well, let's just say that I'm very good at seeing things from other people's perspectives." She replied, smiling underneath the scarf.

Before I could think of anything to say, she continued.

"I have to say, those drones of yours were rather nifty. Some sort of scouting device? Allowing you to choose your targets carefully?"

"Yeah…" I nodded.

"Gotta say, the thing with the alarm system? Sloppy. Didn't you have anything prepared?"

"Well. Uhm… I need stuff to build the stuff to get the stuff I need, and there was…" I replied. What exactly did she know about me? Everything?

She thought about my answer for a moment.

"So, why a jewelry store?"

"Well, you know, stuff inside, like, some stones have rare metals, and also I think I can use some of them for, like, energy storage and things. And I already have stuff, but… not the stuff I need."

"So you need cash to get tools, but you need tools to get cash, and in order to try and figure out this dilemma, you got sloppy?"

That… was remarkably on the point.

It was weird. She'd teleported me on top of this building, and she was criticizing me, but it wasn't like when someone like Henry got mad. More like she was asking actual questions, instead of rhetorical ones. I switched my voice modulator off, it was silly to have a hostile deep voice when talking to her.

"Yeah…"

She started laughing, and I wondered how old she was. She looked young, like a student or something maybe. Not a high-schooler, but not old either. Kind of like how my mom thought she looked.

"You know, you really remind me of myself at that age." She said. "I mean, you just get powers, and you think 'hey, I should rob people'".

"S'not that… I need it for my grappling hook and my anti-gravity suit. I found this new design, but… I need the stuff to make it happen."

After about a second, she suddenly started laughing her ass of. Or, at least, miming it, she made remarkably little sound. Probably because she was quite good at staying silent.

"So the Uber and Leet thing, that was you? All to steal their little snitch? Damn girl, that's amazing!"

"S'not like that was the goal, and, you know… how'd you know that anyway?" I replied. It was like this woman could see right through me. Weird. And it wasn't like she'd planned on getting her hands on the snitch, it'd just worked out that way.

"Well, I'd had my eyes on it for a bit, stealing stuff like that, it's good for rep without getting people overly angry. It's also fun!"

I got an idea, and looked in the back of my mind. It'd been a bit big, I had about…. One and a half of them in storage. The second one would start finishing once I'd brought it out.

I called it forth, the snitch appearing in my arms.

"You know, that's a really cool trick you got there girl. What's your name anyway? Mine's Rose."

"Gadget, and… s'not that cool. Disappears after a couple hours."

"Not that cool? Gotta disagree with you there Gadget. Now, the thing is, I have a deal for you."

A deal? Was this going to be some sort of 'give me everything you got and I won't kill you' type of deal? "What deal?"

"I've got my eyes on something that's a bit… difficult to find. So, how about you give me some technological help, and in return, I teach you the tricks of the trade?"

I had to admit… I didn't really have to think about that at all. "Deal."


	39. Chapter 6,4

**Chapter 6.4**  
 _April 26, 2010._

"This is comms to Argenta and Vista, do you read me? Over" a voice rang out. Not Carlos's, even though he was on console duty today, but someone from the PRT instead.

Quickly, Vista replied. "Loud and clear, Over."

"We got a conflict due east of you, Armsmaster and Dauntless are moving in, but be careful, there might be some noise coming your way."

"Got it, Over!" Vista replied.

Vista looked at her, with an intense look in her eyes. "Wonder what's happening… They're not telling us…"

Right now, they were on the edges of what was colloquially known as "Protectorate territory", a name for the areas without a gang presence, where it wasn't as dangerous to patrol. There were some people around, looking at them, but they were generally left alone when they looked like they were busy.

They heard a crash in the distance, a building crumbling? Something big was happening, and people in the area were starting to panic. Eventually, a crackling voice came over the comms. Armsmaster. "Girls, we're handling Lung here, but Hookwolf's on the run, going in your direction. Evacuate the area and DO NOT engage." He said.

"Hookwolf!?" Vista said. An angry look came on her face. Some fear visible beneath it, but it was covered by a fierce determination.

Emma took a step away from her, and activated her power, floating upwards. "Attention everyone!" she shouted, and people paid attention. Lots of attention. All their eyes were on her. She wasn't quite sure whether to feel shy, or happy. "We've got a very angry Neo-Nazi incoming, please go inside, and lock the door, we'll handle this!"

Quickly, more quickly than she expected, people followed her orders. It felt great, like she was important.

"We're going to handle him?" Vista said, looking hopeful. "Like, actually doing something?"

"Yeah, right? I mean, like, we, the heroes?" Emma answered.

"I thought, maybe we could simply take him down? Just the two of us? If he was just in a fight with Lung, he's weak and wounded. I can trap him, and then you can use your power and levitate him up!"

"But… Armsmaster said…" She stopped herself before going further. No, that was what Emma would've said. She was Argenta now, people listened when she spoke. She could do this. She wasn't afraid of Hookwolf. "You know what Vista? Let's do this." She continued. Vista smiled.

Quickly, they positioned themselves on the now empty streets. Argenta in front, Vista behind her. She could feel the tension in the air. A voice came over the comms again, but Emma could hardly hear it over the crackling of her electricity. Arcs of lighting surged around, seeking conductive stuff to move around. The pavement was concrete, so it searched around pretty far, and she got lots of interesting stuff. Mostly debris, cans and stuff, but she managed to grab a telephone pole as well, holding it in front of her like a lance, reshaping it to be more aerodynamic, the satisfying crunch of metal was music to her ears, as was the light-bulb at the tope that now shone incandescently. She reinforced the bulb a bit, increasing the thickness of the wire. It wouldn't look as cool if the light burned out mid-fight.

Behind her, she saw Vista talking on the comms, getting prepared for battle. Then, Hookwolf turned the corner.

He was completely metal, the tiny barbs sticking out of him half-molten, and he was dashing like a madman. Had the heat disabled his eyes? Did he even have eyes in this form?

Vista twisted the area in front of him, in the alley he was rushing through, throwing him into a wall. Definitely a decrease in eye-sight. Argenta raised her streetlight, launching it towards the Nazi cape. Through the long piece of metal, lightning arced onto Hookwolf, and she could sense him, his insides. Or, at least, large parts of him. Somehow, she couldn't reach the core.

However, she didn't need to reach the core. She just needed to pump in enough power to lift him up.

Through the current, Hookwolf recovered, and dashed for her. Vista twisted the space in front of them, slowing Hookwolf. It felt weird, what she was doing to her pole, but the increased "distance" did not seem to increase the resistance the pole offered her arcs of electricity. She pumped in more power, setting herself on the ground to get more stable footing, and lifted Hookwolf.

It worked, lifting the Nazi into the air, making him unable to move.

Argenta panted, she'd used a lot of power in a short time. Vista was on her comms, and Argenta checked her own. Nothing, she'd fried them in her enthusiasm fighting Hookwolf. Oh well, how bad could it be? They'd arrested Hookwolf after all.

Suddenly, she felt something changing. Hookwolf was transforming back into his normal form for just a second.

She could feel the current racing through muscle, bone and other organs… Just like when…

Then, Hookwolf quickly turned back into his completely metal form, unable to brave the electric currents.

Emma let out her breath. That had almost gone very, very wrong.

*** Gadget ***

We were standing in my new hideout, around a big table with a totally neat paper-craft model. I could've created some sort of hologram gizmo, but, y'know, time and resources.

I'd even made tiny paper guards, with tiny dotted patrol routes, as well as tiny red strings for laser beams. Which were supposed to be red, even when they were invisible.

Rose was standing on the other side of the table, this time without the disguise. Her dirty blonde hair was shortish, falling just below her ears, and she had a playful smile on her face.

"So… with all the stuff in the museum, why, exactly, are we only stealing one thing?" I asked.

"Well, first of all, it's a museum, so everything they have is well-catalogued and public. That means that, whatever we steal, people are going to know its stolen."

"Meaning it's hard to sell, right?"

"Correct, it's harder to fence stuff like that. Now, second, if we were to rob the entire museum of everything it had, the white hats would come down on us, and they'd come down on us hard."

"So… We're only taking one thing because if we took everything, it would be a lot of trouble for very little profit?"

"Exactly."

"So, if we don't want to attract attention. Why exactly are we stealing the Brockton Bay declaration of independence?"

"I never said we didn't want to attract attention, I said we didn't want the white hats to come down on us. What we do want, however, is reputation."

"Ahhh, so, we steal from the museum to show people that we can, but we don't steal much in order to not get too much attention from the cops."

"Exactly."

"Sooo…. Why exactly did Brockton Bay have a declaration of independence again?"

"Long story short? Henry Brockton, the guy the place is named after, was an idiot that thought everyone was writing their own. Just, you know, don't tell any of the locals he was an idiot, they don't take kindly to that."

"And what are we going to do with it? is there a secret map on the back? You know that stuff only happens in movies right?"

"Why, we're simply going to ransom it back to the mayor. Not some crazy big sum, mind you, but just enough to cover the prep costs for our next move and a little on the side."

"Okay… Sounds like a plan. What do we need?"

"You tell me. We've already gotten a map, what do you think we need to have for prep?"

"Lessee… Hmmm, there's just a few cameras, not too many to either dodge or de-activate… The guards we can take down easy-peasy as long as they don't see us, and they'll never even know it was us… I'm guessing the lasers, unless you can get us through all of them… Oh, and the stuff they use to do the alarm when we remove the scroll."

"Sounds about right. And yes, I can get us past the lasers as long as we know where they are. Which we do. So, ideas about the security on the thing itself?"

I thought about it… The problem was, I had no idea how it was secured. Was there a pressure sensor? Some sort of magnet array? Tinker-tech? It could be so many things…

"Too many options… can't we just grab it and run? You can get us far enough away that no-one could come after us quick enough right?"

"I could, yes. But let's not limit our options here. What happens when the alarms go off?"

"Ehmmm, Dauntless falls from the sky and zaps you?"

"I mean before that."

"They call the cops… or maybe its automatic?"

"And in either case, that only works if they're in connection with the authorities."

Something dawned on me.

"So we have to take away their ability to communicate!"

"Which buys us extra time, yes. The real question is, is there an internal alarm?"

"Internal? Like, a big buzzer that goes off if something's stolen?"

"Yes. If they have one of those, cutting their cable or modifying it otherwise wouldn't help much unless we somehow also managed to disable all their cell-phones."

Something dawned in my head.

"Actually… I think I could probably-"

"Get the authorities on our backs because we took down the entire cellular network in a major city? Yes, you probably could. Doesn't mean you should."

I thought about the dilemma some more. How would I be able to keep the internal alarm silent?

Maybe… Maybe I could use the same thing I used for my prank at school. After all, silence was only one kind of sound. If I hijacked the system to set the sound to zero… But, there'd probably also be other stuff added into the alarm system. I could create something that would simply hijack the system and keep it as is instead… But I'd need to start all over again.

"Okay… Think I have an idea. So, something to stop contact with the authorities, and something to keep the alarm in its current state, right?"

"Yes, sounds about right. Think you can do that?"

I thought about it for a second. I'd need to get some stuff to wire the right things together, but... if Rose helped me with getting the stuff I needed.

"Think so, yeah… two days?"

"Sounds good. What do you need?"

Fuck, having a personal shopper was awesome.

*** Argenta ***

Piggy was angry.

Piggy was really angry.

Even though they'd caught Hookwolf.

"And you're already in trouble with the Youth Guard Argenta, have you even thought about how this is going to reflect on you?"

"Youth Guard's a bunch of idiots…" she replied. It was true, bunch of pearl-clutching idiots. They reminded her of her mother. Sure, they might mean well, but they were idiots nonetheless.

"A bunch of idiots that can cause us a whole lot of trouble!" Piggy replied, a bit of spit flying from her mouth, landing on Vista's visor.

"As much trouble as Hookwolf killing people?" Vista interjected.

"And you, Vista!" Piggy continued. "I expected this from Argenta, but you're a veteran, you know what you're allowed to do, and what you're not allowed to do. Specifically, Wards do NOT engage known murderers on their own!"

"Wasn't on my own. Had Argenta." She replied, folding her arms. Even when she was moping she looked adorably cute.

"Do you have any idea what would've happened if you lost!?" Piggy shouted again. One of the PRT guys standing in the room was actually covering his ears. Emma saw Missy subconsciously reach an arm towards her breasts, before she found her confidence again.

"We weren't gonna lose. Argenta's a hard counter, he was alone, I had complete battlefield control."

"But what if you did, Missy?" Piggot said again, this time using Vista's civilian name. "What am I supposed to tell your parents? That it's all okay because you thought you could win? You two could've died out there today!"

This time, Vista didn't have an angry retort. It was true. Piggy had a point, but… if they weren't going to risk their lives, what was the purpose of their being a hero? If they stayed back every time an enemy was too dangerous… like Horn had been. Like what had happened in Westlake because Rodeo was too afraid to attack Hallucca.

"S'not what you would say if it'd been an Endbringer." Emma said quietly.

"What was that, Argenta?" Piggy snapped at her.

"You would've said something different if it had been an Endbringer ma'am."

For a second, Piggy glared at her, angrily, before turning around, and starting to leave the room.

"We're done here. Don't do it again." She said, trying to get the last word in.

*** Armsmaster ***

 _April 28, 2010_

"Come in" Colin said absentmindedly, after someone had knocked on the door to his lab.

After he heard the door open, he looked up from his work, only to see a stranger entering the room. A woman, Japanese, shortish hair, short enough to be easy to work with, but not so short that it would start to look mannish.

"Armsmaster, I presume?" she said.

"That's correct. And you are?" he answered.

"Jessica Yamada, therapist. I specialize in parahuman psychology, children, to be more specific."

"I see…" he replied. "I take it you're here for Rachel?"

"Partly, although I think a dog trainer would have more success there."

He quickly pulled up the newly updated files on his tinkering visor, and saw the notes that had been added.

"I see, yes, that explains a lot. So, what else is the reason for your visit?"

"I got contacted by the youth-guard, which is demanding therapy for Argenta after what happened with Hookwolf. I get the distinct impression your local representative dislikes her."

"You can say that, she locked her in her room during her first meeting."

"Oh, that's… more grounded than I expected the complaints to be. Was it hard to get her out after that?"

"Not really, minute's work, tops. Problem was, I thought Assault was on it, while he thought I'd be doing it." he answered. It wasn't a secret that no-one in the Protectorate had really liked the woman, who just kept trying to meddle in affairs that she in no way understood.

"So, anyway, when going through her files, I noticed something. It seems that almost none of the wards have had therapy sessions."

"Oh, could be… Director Piggot manages that stuff." He replied.

"Piggot? I see. It's usually the head of the Protectorate managing the wards."

He sighed… "It's… We decided that she would take those tasks together. It's why the wards are Headquartered in the PRT building, instead of here on the rig."

The woman looked at him for a few seconds before responding carefully. "I've had a few quick interviews with the other wards, trying to find out where they stand vis-à-vis Rachel, relations within the team and such. A lot of them are wondering why Piggot's the one in charge. I get the distinct impression they don't like her that much."

"It's… I know my strengths and weaknesses. This, working in my workshop, patrolling, fighting, it's what I'm good at. Handling children? I can barely keep track of my own daughter, let alone a bunch of teenage superheroes."

"Mr Wallis. It's not that simple. You can't just not take the job because you're afraid you'll be bad at it. These kids, they look up to you in a way that they will never look up to Piggot. She'll always remain some annoying government bureaucrat telling them not to do things. You have a reputation. A good one. They feel like it's their fault you won't get involved."

"I… I'm not sure how to react to that. Anyway, Piggot's got the authority now, she's not going to let it go."

"Just think about it. There might be something else you can do. Anyway, it seems I'll have to have a talk with Piggot then. Thank you for your time."

"Yes… Thanks for the advice." He replied, returning to his work while the woman left the lab.

He mulled her words over in his head. He had been ignoring the wards. Sure, he'd commanded them in battle when needed, but was that enough? With Sely, he'd needed patience, time, and attention. She wasn't like Hannah, who could do as commanded when necessary.

Perhaps he should pay some more attention to the wards. To his wards. But then again, Piggot could be so bull-headed. She probably wouldn't like it if he got involved again.

Why couldn't everything be as easy as creating a plasma injector…

*** Emma ***

"I don't know…" Emma replied.

"Are you sure Emma?" the woman said.

"I… It's just… I'm not scared."

"Emma… it's okay. I won't tell anyone anything about what you say here."

She wasn't sure what to think about that. Would she really?

"It's… I hate me…"

"I'm thinking there's more to it than just self-loathing…"

"It's… I hate the me that's.. I hate Emma. It's all just… You know… Boys, Cheerleading, who's dating who, who's wearing what, who said what about whom…

"And then, like, while all that's happening. There's stuff everywhere, but… but people just ignore it… I just ignored it… You just walk right past the stuff that's wrong… you see a catastrophe on the news and then after that you see a new dress you like…

"And then it happens to you… and it hurts… and everyone you know is getting hurt…"

She took a moment, and Jessica handed her a paper towel. After half a minute or so, she continued again.

"And… and you just know that everyone else who sees it on the news… everyone else just ignores it… and they see it on the news… and then they go shopping and they forget it…

"and… and then… when I… and everyone just ignored it too… they just pretended it wasn't there…

"And… and that's just everything normal… but… every time there's an attack… people die, and they're not coming back… and… and everyone's ignoring it… we're all going to die and people are ignoring it because they're too busy with dresses and makeup and…"

"And you don't want to be like that anymore" Jessica finished.

"uh-huh…"

They sat there for a few minutes, Emma trying to recover a bit.

"Emma… is there anything else? Remember, you can tell me everything. I won't tell anyone else… I promise."

Emma gathered herself together. "I… there's a problem… and… I just don't know what to do… It's, like, both of them don't want me to say anything but if I don't say anything…"

"Do you think maybe I could give you some outside perspective? I can't solve your problem for you, but maybe I can help?"

"It's… My best friend, more like my only real friend here… She's a cape, but, like, her dad is a cape too. And I know from both of them, but they both don't want me to tell the other, but, like… I just can't keep all those secrets, and, every time I talk to her I feel like I'm lying and I hate myself… I just… I don't know what to do…"


	40. Chapter 6,5

**Chapter 6.5**  
May 3, 2010

Class ended in five minutes, and all she could think was, _an hour is too long for lunch_.

She looked around the room with nervous eyes, scanning. Some of the girls had spent a large part of the class pelting her with spitballs, but that wasn't what she was worried about.

Emma had that look on her face again, the look that told her she was going to do something horrible.

She'd thought that what had happened would've had the opposite effect, she'd been wrong.

When she'd heard the rumours on the bus that morning, she hadn't believed it. It was, strangely enough, too good to be true.

When the teacher had made the announcement this morning, when Madison had started crying in that fake cute way of hers, she'd felt a perverse sort of pleasure.

She knew it was wrong, to feel like that. It wasn't really something to feel happy about. But maybe, she'd thought, it'd mean that Emma and Madison would let up a bit, now that only two out of three remained.

Eventually, the teacher decided that it he wasn't going to get anything else done today. People were talking, discussing what had happened. Taylor just left the classroom; she wanted to get as far away from Emma Barnes as she could. *** Officer Barbrady ***  
For the third time in as many days, Barbrady entered the crime-scene. The bodies had been removed two days ago, and he made sure not to step on the chalk outlines. On first sight, it seemed like an easily solved case. Single mother, three children, all black. Given the amount of violence involved, the fact that it seemed like nothing had been stolen, and the fact that Brockton Bay had a very sizeable neo-Nazi population, the words 'Empire attack' were on everyone's tongue.

It was a simple solution, but it didn't seem quite right. The mother and her three-year-old had been shot, killed cleanly and quickly. The young man, Terry, however…

For some reason, what had seemed to be an execution, had turned into a fistfight that befitted an action-movie. Chairs had been smashed against walls, fists had left blood on the furniture. Why such excessively personal violence? Had it been a perceived slight by the young man that had angered the culprit and driven him to this? It seemed unlikely, and didn't explain what had happened to the teenage girl.

Her immediate family had been killed, but for some reason, Sophia Hess had been kidnapped. Not a good fate for a girl in this town.

It was a strange case, one which Barbrady was afraid he would not be able to follow to its conclusion. The Nazi element was, after all, not limited to the gangs. There were quite a few people in city hall, as well as the police station, that would think it a waste to spend too many resources here. Such was quite simply the reality of living in the skinhead capital of America.

"Sir, I think you should take a look at this" one of his underlings called out. Stephenson, the new guy, stood in the hallway near the stairs.

He followed the man, up to the second floor. Stephenson led him into what he recognized had been Sophia's room. It was typical teenager stuff. Maybe a bit Spartan, but there were pictures. Most of them several years old, from when she'd been ten or twelve, of her and her family. There were also a few newer ones of the girl and her friend, the Barnes girl. That had been another dead end. The girl's father was a lawyer, specializing in divorce, and had used his amazing ineptitude but considerable pull with the higher-ups to make it almost impossible to ask any questions.

Stephenson then motioned to a small hole in the wall that hadn't been there before. How the man had found it, he didn't know, but he'd broken away a wooden plank in the wall. Through the gap, Barbrady could see some sort of secret compartment that should have, by all means, been almost unreachable without breaking the piece of wood that had covered it.

In the secret compartment, he saw a crossbow, a hockey-mask, and a thick leather duster, all painted black.

"Guess this one is above our pay-grade. "he said. "I'll call the PRT, you make an overview of what we have so far to hand over once they're here."

*** Gadget ***

"Are you really sure it's the right one?" I asked, again. It just didn't make sense. A declaration of independence was supposed to be an official document, but for some reason, someone had replaced half the s's with weird f's. Had it been dictated by someone with a lisp?

"Yes, and now is not the time." Rose said, climbing up the rope we'd used to get from the mezzanine through which we'd entered towards the artefact itself. I was the one that had been wounded up until like a week ago, but she was the slow climber.

Probably because she usually just teleported wherever she needed to go. This time however, she hadn't been able to do that, as she knew I'd taunt her horribly for having spaghetti arms.

When she finally finished ascending, we made our way out, sneaking past the sleeping security guard. I wondered what his boss would say about him sleeping on the job. Would he be fired? And, had it been a baseball bat to the back of the head instead, would he not have been fired?

Also, wasn't a baseball bat to the back of the head actually rather lethal? I could remember reading something about that once, but that had been on the internet. People lied on the internet.

I ran forward to the balcony, stolen treasure in my hands, and looked in the distance at our target, the Forsberg Gallery. From there, the highest building in the city, we could quickly make our way to our base of operations, without giving away our location.

"You ready slowpoke?" I asked, not turning around. I had to keep my eyes on the building.

"Count of five" Rose said.

I started counting mentally, body still filled with adrenaline from the successful heist.

Five… four… three... two… one…

I blinked, and found myself on top of the gallery. I quickly looked for the binoculars we'd stashed here.

It was cold and windy up here, but there wasn't any rain, which was nice. After a few seconds, Rose popped in on the roof, opening her eyes slowly.

Her power was strong, able to teleport herself and others incredible ranges, without any spectacle. But her ability was also slow to use. It was generally safer to just teleport away before danger was there than to use it mid-combat.

"That was awesome!" I yelled. I couldn't believe we'd actually done it. Within my hand, I held Brockton Bay's declaration of independence, signed by Brockton himself.

"You want to celebrate at my place?" Rose asked.

Her place… I hadn't been there yet, we'd mostly just planned this entire thing in the middle of my workshop/base.

"Sure!" I replied, trying to sound cool. I'd get to see the actual hideout of a master thief! What wasn't to like?

"Take the binoculars and look in that direction" she "said, pointing towards an apartment building in the distance with full-length windows. "And don't forget to send a message to your dad that you'll be even later." She added. It wasn't like dad would care… something had come up at work, again, and he had to stay in late.

Looking at the building, and blinking, I suddenly found myself inside the building. Because of course her power was bullshit enough to go through glass.

Which I could have known, because it worked through both my helmet and the binoculars.

The apartment itself was nice, cosy, and contained way too many pillows. There was a big couch with a corner in it that was completely useless because you couldn't sit on it because of all the pillows. On the walls were old oil paintings, and there were a few other trinkets lying around. It looked like she kept her favourite trophies on display.

As I was looking through her collection, wondering if I could maybe grab one of those necklaces for myself, she appeared at the window, and walked towards the table where I'd placed our loot.

"Sweet pad." I answered.

"I know right? Totally on fleek!" she replied.

I looked at her, and removed my helmet to properly convey the level of disappointment I was feeling.

"Kids your age don't say on fleek anymore? Come on Sely, I'm only twenty… you're making me feel old."

"No-one ever said on fleek." I replied.

"Whatever… you pick a movie? I'll order pizza." She said, trying to change the topic.

"Order? What if someone sees all the paintings here?" I asked.

"What? The art student's apartment is filled with replica's and posters? Also, I don't have any of it near the door, and most pizza guys aren't really into art, so they wouldn't know it was stolen anyways."

"Oh… Okay." I replied, taking of my shoes, and getting ready to jump on top of the couch. Once located on top of five different pillows, I checked the remote, and went through her media set-up.

It was… shoddy. Quickly, I stood up, and walked to the TV to get a better look at what she had going on. There was a console, a recording box, something for cable tv, and a gigantic mess of wires, each connected in ridiculous ways. The system was filled with inefficiencies and such. I counted at least four different devices connected to her wifi, six adapters doing the same thing… The entire thing was frustrating to say the least. It reminded me of living with mom, having to deal with her bullshit electric stuff. Dad's system was way better, far more optimized and efficient.

I wasn't quite sure how long it'd taken, but eventually I'd improved the system up to the point where I could at least tolerate it. Sure, the floor was covered in gutted electronics, but everything would work much better now.

I looked up to see Rose looking at me, pizza boxes in her hands and drinks already placed on the small table.

"I fixed your stuff." I informed her, idly removing a piece of electrical cabling from my hair.

Always having your tools with you was such a useful ability. *** Dauntless***  
He pretended to dodge, sidestepping his imaginary opponent, before striking at the bag again. He felt the impact pound through his arm.

It wasn't good enough.

He struck again, and again, and again. He needed to be better, faster, stronger…

He'd failed…

He'd been a useless idiot,

Again, he struck, and he looked at his fist. Blood covered them, both literally and figuratively.

If he'd been better at his job… If he'd been able to bring her in… If he'd done what Piggot had told him to do and arrested her for little to no reason…

Sure, she wouldn't be happy if he'd done that. But she'd have been safe. Now…

He sat down on one of the chair in in the gym, and held his spear.

He'd always thought things would work out for him in the end. His power worked by making him stronger every single day. No matter how dangerous the threat, he would eventually be able to deal with it.

But in the meantime… while he was still weak…

He needed to get stronger, stronger and better.

He stood up and walked to their target range, wielding his arclance. He wasn't quite sure how long he was there, fighting imaginary opponents, trying to do SOMETHING. Colin was at the crime scene with his tools, Jessica had brought Rachel along to see if her dogs could smell something. He just stood there in the middle of the rig, being useless.

Perhaps if he grabbed a lens or something? The type of stuff you'd see in a Sherlock Holmes movie? Would that allow him to do something here?

He looked down, his hands had been leaking, and the grip of the spear was covered in blood. The lines of energy created by his gear surrounded him, making him light up, making him look better than he actually was.

"Hey, you all right?" someone asked. He turned around, noticing Miss Militia. When he was a teenager, before he had his power, he'd had a crush on her, he'd even done a report on her once, painting her as the ultimate immigrant and the spirit of America.

He'd been a member of the Protectorate for several years now, and he still found himself in awe every now and then. The idea that he could stand side by side with people like her, it seemed ridiculous, even now. He was such a fake…

He sat down, holding his head in his hands, as Hannah approached.

"Not sure if you noticed… but you made the lights go out a couple of times." She remarked, sympathy in her voice.

He didn't answer, how could he? What could he even say? That he was a failure of a hero? That he couldn't save one little girl? Poor stalker, poor Sophia, her family probably murdered in front of her eyes, getting kidnapped like that. Her friends didn't even want to help, hiding behind a lawyer, afraid they'd get into trouble for something…

Eventually, he noticed the steaming hot cup of coffee militia had put in front of him. "Thanks." he said.

"No problem" her reply came.

He wasn't sure what to say to that. He'd never really been good at getting along with the team. They were just all so different to him, so much better. Sure, Militia had her power, but her aim was all her, he was quite sure of that. He just had his gear, supplied by his power. How could someone so pathetic hold up to the others? His entire life was as fake as a movie. He pretended to be amazing, but when it came down to it…

Why did he suck so much… *** Rachel ***  
Armsmaster was doing something with some technological thing, looking at stuff, making things bleep and getting little lights to go on and off.

Rachel knew, theoretically at least, what he was doing. But she didn't have the head for it.

Armsmaster had disagreed, told her that she should be paying attention. He thought she could be great at detectiving. She wasn't quite sure what to think of that. Her helmet told her that it had been the truth, but it was so obviously not…

She looked at her dogs, plus the bloodhound they'd borrowed from someone. Even though it had been a few days before they'd been called in, her power made the dog good enough that he could still smell everything. Not that that had helped. It only told them what they already suspected. Some people, at least two of them, had come in, one person, or at least one gun, had shot the mother and her youngest daughter. Then, someone, probably someone else, had fought with the son, punching him through the room, and eventually killing him. Then, they'd gone for the girl, Shadow Stalker, grabbed her somehow, and brought her in.

So why would they shoot first, but then start fighting? The boy hadn't had any powers, it wasn't like bullets wouldn't have worked. Maybe there was something else? Had the person enjoyed having a fight? A single mom and a toddler hadn't been a challenge, but a nineteen year old in the bad part of town?

So who would want to fight instead of shooting? Not the Nazis. They wouldn't have thought there was any honour in fighting someone with a different skin colour. It was stupid, but that was Nazis.

Racism with dogs she could at least sort of understand. Some dogs were bred for running, others for standing guard, others to be lap-dogs. Different breeds had different temperaments and needs, although that varied individually as well. Humans however, didn't have that. The only difference between a black person and a white person was how they looked. And those differences weren't even all that big. Saying race mattered was like saying that there were big differences between different coat colours of the same type of dog.

Maybe Nazis were all secretly Chihuahua's that ignored the part where they were small and useless, and tried to distract people by yelling that their fur was the same colour as that big bulldog somewhere in the history books.

She walked over to her boss, pulling on the sleeve of his armour.

He looked at her, and nodded, not using words where they weren't necessary, he knew what she meant.

"One of them has fighting powers… thinking, not brutal." She said.

He looked through the room, and Rachel pointed at the evidence.

"Physical combat when it wasn't necessary, no evidence of unnatural force but very one-sided nonetheless, I agree." He replied.

She wondered who could have done it. Jes had explained about the different people in the city, but Rachel didn't think any of them would fit. The empire were Chihuahuas, Lung and Oni Lee just used their powers and were also racist. She wondered for a while what dog they would be. Shiba Inu maybe? No, those were too smart. Maybe Shih Tzu? Those looked weird enough, and Lung would probably make a pretty good foot-warmer.

The Merchants? No, she didn't even have to think about them. Also, she wasn't going to compare them to dogs. They were irrelevant, kind of like cats.

The Undersiders? Those were teenagers, but it didn't make any sense. They wouldn't kill her family if they wanted to recruit the girl. Or maybe Shadow Stalker had hated her family? Like she'd hated her foster parents? Rachel hadn't wanted to, but…

No, then there'd be crossbow bolts, not bullets.

It just didn't make any sense. It probably wasn't someone from Brockton Bay then. An outsider, with an interest in fighting, martial arts. He or she had had minions, at least one of whom had a gun. Tinker gun? Maybe, Armsmaster would know, but he hadn't found anything yet.

Maybe they could try to figure out how the person who had done this had found where Stalker lived, that could maybe narrow it down.

Again, she moved to Armsmaster, who was looking at something on his phone.

"Her patrol places?" she asked.

"Sounds like an idea… Dauntless should know where she hung out… I'll call him and get him to help you." He replied.

She'd have the bloodhound compare smells, following Sophia's, and figuring out where exactly on her patrol routes another smell that had been here intersected. That'd work, unless Stalkers power meant she didn't leave much of a scent when she was a shadow. That would make it harder.

But scents were in the air, and Stalker turned into a gas, which meant the scent was probably easier to track. Maybe. It made sense in her head, but she was usually wrong with that sort of stuff. She wasn't all that smart, she knew. She couldn't read very well, could never follow the lessons when she'd gone to school. Even the piano stuff, she kept forgetting, and reading notes was harder than reading normal things.

Maybe she should try the piano thing again… making music had been nice when stuff actually worked out, when she hadn't been forced to… She'd tried playing, every now and then, when she found a piano in public, but people often recognized her, and then she'd have to run…

Pianos were expensive though, she knew that. Her foster mom had been very clear about what she would do if Rachel broke the piano. She remembered what had happened when she had punched it in anger.

Maybe Armsmaster could make her an instrument? Like he'd made her the helmet. That would be nice. She'd have something to do whenever the other wards were being boring and her dogs were tired, and everything was better than homework. ***Argenta***  
Emma looked over the message a final time before sending it. She'd used her civilian phone, which she was pretty sure wasn't being tapped, but she wasn't quite sure on how to say what she wanted to say.

She'd heard that being a cape was dangerous, she'd felt someone die because of her power, but that had been a bad guy. This… Stalker was a vigilante, and not a crazy one like Horn had been. If this could happen to Stalker, it could happen to Sely as well. Sure, her father getting killed wasn't very likely, but…

She pressed send, looking at the message while its data was being send into the sky. One of the interns had tried explaining to her how it worked, seeing if she could do it with her power, but it had been way too difficult to follow. Lots of math.

 _"Hey Sely, we just found out that Shadow Stalker, a fourteen year old vigilante, got violently kidnapped. Please be safe, okay?"_

Keeping secrets was hard, and she didn't want to lie, but… She didn't want to be the kind of person that betrayed her friends either. She'd talked about it with miss Yamada, but it hadn't really helped, and only led to more questions. 


	41. Interlude: Myrddin's knights

**Interlude: Myrddin's knights**  
12 July 2000

"I'm just saying, I think she'd be really into this." Chevalier replied, quickly jumping out of the way of the thrown rubble, hiding behind one of the walls that was still standing.

"Look Chev, I don't know how many times I have to repeat this, but not all anime is tentacle porn." Colin replied, taking another glance around the corner.

It was big, about three stories tall, with far more tentacles than it was supposed to have. It was also pink for some reason, and it was destroying the university campus by throwing rubble everywhere.

"I know, you've shown me Nausica like fifty times, I'm just saying, I'm pretty sure that MP limits herself to the porn stuff."

Another car came crashing through the wall, and Colin ducked out of the way. For how large the thing was, it didn't seem to have that much physical strength, at least not in comparison to the average brute. He also hadn't noticed any other obviously supernatural traits, except for the mere fact that it existed.

"Yeah, but that just means she's into Yaoi, not tentacles. Also, you knock over that wall there, and I'll take out the left side." He replied, pointing at one of the few remaining walls nearby that, when thrown over just right, would give him a safe-ish approach.

Chevalier grabbed his gunlance, and aimed. Just before he fired, Colin started dashing forward. He trusted his friend, and right when he reached the open area before the beast, the cannonball launched forward, toppling over the piece of wall, and giving him cover through the rubble and dust.

A few seconds later, he reached the first tentacles. They didn't seem to react to his presence; did the beast even have sensory perceptions? Not wanting to spoil the element of surprise, he snuck in between two of them, careful not to touch them. It was hard. Sleek as it might be, power armour was still power armour.

Then, the tentacle to his right coiled around something, and lifted itself up, ready to throw something. He dashed, rolling under it, and standing up on the other side. He was getting closer to the core. The problem was, if he didn't finish it in one strike, it'd take him down within a second.

He checked his lance. It was thick. Not as thick as Chev's, even though there was far more tech crammed into it, but still larger than a spear.

He wished he'd crammed the scythe-blade into it. A slashing attack would both be effective, and possibly delicious. If the PRT didn't just decide to burn everything for some reason.

Why had he exchanged his halberd for this thing again? Oh yeah, because Chev had insisted they'd be the spear-bros.

After which MP's obsession with Yaoi had started.

He idly noticed that, perhaps, he should've come up with a plan before sneaking his way in to the core of the beast, when another tentacle lifted itself temporarily. Another roll, followed by a quick jump over a gap in the pavement with a half-sunken dendrite, brought him ever closer.

His best hope was probably the brute-tier taser he'd built into the lance. The fact that he would almost certainly die if it failed, meant that he could safely reroute all t batteries of his suit into the device. The only question was whether the thing had any sort of standard biology, or if it was wholly invulnerable to electrical currents.

"Ready for the coup-de-grace, also, where's empy anyway?" he said over the coms.

Not waiting for an answer from the guy that technically had seniority, he finished rerouting the power. He left a little bit of energy in the legs of his suit, meaning he could launch himself forward. Then, in mid-air, he aimed his lance at what seemed to be the central area of the beast. It's nerve centre, if not physically, then at least metaphorically.

The weapon struck home, frying itself by emptying his entire battery in one go. He saw the lights inside his helmet go dark, and the world smelled of calamari.

***

College chicks, what was it with Chev and college chicks.

Maybe that wasn't a good question, after all, he already knew what it was with Chev and college chicks. It was the same thing almost every guy had with college chicks.

Colin made his way through the crowd of drunken not-quite-21-year-olds. The music was loud and bad, the drinks was served in plastic cups, and several people were playing beer pong, badly. For once, the local frats and sororities had an actual excuse to party, and, true to form, they'd thrown one hell of a party.

He hadn't spotted Kate yet, which meant she was probably out and about annoying drunk people in costume. He had, however, spotted Edward. As a civilian, Chev presented himself as a frat boy. Easygoing, social, popular. It was very different from how he was in costume. Sure, they joked around together every now and then, but they were both driven, determined to do better, to be better. The thing was, Edward was actually capable of relaxing. Of living in the moment, instead of always thinking about the next job, the next enemy, of what was happening that he could have stopped.

In a way, Colin was jealous of that. He'd tried. They'd signed up for classes together, mostly useless stuff. A bit of ancient history, he'd always been interested in the Romans, a bit of art, mosty movie stuff, and Kate had somehow shanghaied him into an interpretative dance class. He'd been promptly asked not to return, and hadn't really minded.

Problem was, as fun as learning about imperial assassinations was, he simply couldn't take his mind of the job. He'd find himself zoning out, drawing schematics instead of taking notes, thinking of counterstrategies he'd use against notorious villains. He was good, far better than most other Protectorate capes, and he knew it. He knew that every time he didn't go on patrol, could've meant someone would die. Every hour he didn't spend in his workshop was a potential loss. It wasn't fair, but he could bear that burden. He almost wished he couldn't. That he'd burn out, make some stupid mistake, get benched.

Edward was at the small bar, mixing drinks, passing them to unsuspecting party-goers. Colin grabbed a chair, and sat down.

"Look what the cat dragged in!" Edward said, cheerfully.

"You should remember that one for Kate, she'll love it." he replied.

"Nahh, too obvious. She's probably heard it a thousand times." Edward said.

"So, bartender, what do we have today?"

Edward grabbed a couple of different bottles, filled with a random assortment of liquids, and started pouring some into a glass for Colin.

"Lets seeee." He said. "We'll use Whiskey as a base, put some Sprite in there for that extra zing, oooh maybe something creamy?" he asked.

"Go ahead, I know your tricks" he replied.

Grabbing different bottles, Edward filled up his glass with, in order, Milk, something that looked like pineapple juice, some beer from the tap, and a mint leaf. Had anyone else made it, Colin wouldn't have trusted it, since it would've been disgusting. Edward, however, was a different story. His power let him take different things that were similar to each other, and combine them, taking whatever features he liked best. In combat, that meant his spear was sturdy, ridiculously large, incredibly light, easy to handle, and really really fancy. At the bar, that meant that, rather than just mix drinks, he selected the features he wanted, leading to a one of a kind experience, made possible only by his parahuman ability.

One that, of course, Edward used mostly for silly bets. He'd make something that looked horrifying, bet some chick that she would love it, and let her drink it. Then, the following morning, Edward would get a phone-call from Myrddin asking when exactly he was planning to show up, and he'd have to sneak out of the girls room.

Had he mentioned that Edward was kind of a frat boy when he wanted to?

Once the drink was ready, he took a sip.

He promptly spitted it out.

After all, while Edward could combine the best part of several different drinks into one, he could also do the opposite.

"Very funny." He said, a frown on your face.

Chev just laughed.

"Funny? You talking about me?" a female voice said. Colin looked at its owner. Kate, better known as Mouse Protector, had taken a seat next to him, and was holding something behind her back.

"Us? Call you funny? Never!" Edward replied, that same stupid smirk on his face.

"Well, you better wipe that smile of your face Ed, cause I found something in-te-res-ting!" she said, individually emphasizing the separate syllables.

"What, you found a sense of humour somewhere?" Colin asked.

"Nope, something better!" Kate grinned.

Behind them, Colin could hear the crowd shuffling, dancing badly to the shitty music, people were shouting, yelling for no reason, cheering each other on, happy they had survived the giant squid attack of 2000. That kind of party wasn't really Colin's thing, not even when he managed to put the job behind him. This, hanging out with his friends, it was better. He liked this.

"Spit it out Kate, Colin and I have a bet about you to settle." Edward said.

A bet? Oh, the tentacle thing.

"Well." She said, speaking slowly, teasing with every word, she wasn't going to give up her secret without getting the proper attention for it. "I was in the, ehm, Japanese cultural club, for, you know, reasons... aaand, I saw something interesting."

"Kate, we all saw the giant squid-monster, that was actually real, not in your head." Colin said.

"Oooh, I know, squidmonster was cool, but… its sooo much better than that. You see, the people in the club, they don't just read stuff. They create it." she said, a smile that was way too big on her face.

He waited, patiently, until Kate continued, he knew her, trying to hurry her along would only make her extend the process. If she thought they thought it was uninteresting, maybe she would hurry it along.

"Soooooo. I found this." She said, smashing a small book on the table. The cover was illustrated, and had two figures on it.

One of the figures was Chevalier, only for some reason he wasn't wearing a breastplate. He was wearing his helmet, and his gauntlets, but his torso was completely uncovered.

The other figure was him, wielding what could only be described as a rather phallic piece of weaponry, not unlike his recently fried spear. His hand was… somewhere in the vicinity of Chevaliers butt.

He looked at Edward, who was equally shocked, and slightly entertained.

"The best part is page seven, where Chevalier asks Armsmaster to help him with maintenance on his gunlance, he can't seem to make it grow bigger!" Kate yelped out.

Colins hand darted out, trying to grab the smutty little book. He saw Edward doing the same.

Kate, however, was cheating, and used her enhanced agility to quickly grab the book and start running. Colin stood up, and started dashing after her, while he heard Edward jump over the counter behind him, dropping a few bottles to the floor in the process.

"Hey Edward, does Hannah know about this?" Kate taunted. "Is this why you stopped dating?"

 _May 10, 2005_

"I still can't quite believe it." Mouse Protector said.

"I know… it's one thing to hear about it on the news, another to see the entire thing for yourself" Myrddin said.

Colin looked at his glass. He couldn't remember how many he'd had, he just didn't want to feel the sting of failure anymore.

Leviathan had crushed the entirety of Newfoundland. A repeat of Kyushu, destroying a major landmass. No matter how hard they fought, they simply couldn't hurt the thing.

Sure, it bled, sometimes someone would manage to carve out chunks of the creatures flesh, but it always returned. Every year, three or more times a year, another city devastated by the creatures.

He looked around the table, observing his friends. Mouse Protector didn't even have the energy to make jokes. He knew she never joined the fray directly, instead using her powers for search and rescue, but that just meant that she actually saw all the corpses, knew how many people had died that shouldn't have.

Myrddin was being the rational one, strangely enough. He'd been a hero for quite a few years now, but Myrddin had been there really early on. If people thought wizard, they thought of Myrddin. He'd been there, in Kyushu. He'd seen it all before, and now he'd seen it all happen all over again.

Chev was focussed on his drink, not even attempting his usual tricks.

Eventually, Myrddin broke the uncomfortable silence.

"There's been a lot of deaths. Big ones. Important capes, team leaders." He stated.

Armsmaster knew this had only been a matter of time. After Chevalier and Mouse Protector had graduated from the wards, and he had joined the Protectorate after triggering, they'd worked under Myrddin together. Not just doing routine patrols, but actually getting proactive about it. Eventually, after some pushing from the PR department and Mouse Protector, they'd gone for a theme, sort of at least.

Myrddin, of course, was their wizard. The rest of them were his knights. Chevalier was probably the most obvious in his full plate, the classical knight, warrior, protector. Mouse Protector just looked like something from a Disney movie anyway, her cuirass left her midriff bare, just the way she liked it. He would probably never understand that, it was a major hazard, a weak spot, but she was a girl, and he'd never understood those.

That left him, still at the start of his career, trying to forge an identity. On Chevalier's insistence, he'd replaced his little blaster with a tinker-tech spear. After it had gotten fried fighting some sort of crazy tentacle beastie, he'd replaced it with a Halberd, after which Chevalier changed to his gunblade. Once he'd had his weapon, the rest was easy. Power armour was still, after all, armour, and he'd looked like a sci-fi warrior.

Up until now, his time in the protectorate had been good. Sure, there'd been bad times, such as working under Alexandria, but he'd been able to escape those situations by going on a special mission.

"Philadelphia lost its leader, as did Brockton Bay, Phoenix, San Diego…" Myrddin continued.

"So… promotions." Chevalier stated.

It had only been a day, and already, people were already planning, redistributing.

"Promotions." Myrddin confirmed. "I know you and Armsmaster have been confirmed, and the PRT is still discussing about Mouse Protector."

"Guess we'll see each other even less" Colin said.

"Yeah… Seems like the only time we ever get to meet each other is during stuff like this." Mouse Protector said.

They collectively sighed, depressed at the state of affairs in the world.

"Very well then." Armsmaster said, raising up his glass. "A toast, that we may see very little of each other in the coming years."

The rest raised their glasses, and they clinked them together.

Idly, he wondered where he would be stationed. What kind of team would he lead? How the hell was he going to handle stuff like wards? He wasn't good with people, let alone kids.

Maybe he could built something to help him? Something that would help him gauge peoples moods, detect feints and misdirection. Social combat was, after all, a form of combat, and in combat, it helped to be armed and prepared.

Why had they chosen him? He was good, sure, but so was MP, and though she was on the shortlist, his position had been assured. Was it his more stoic nature? Sheer combat capability? Old-fashioned sexism? He didn't know.

He took another sip of his drink, emptying the glass, and asked the bartender for another.

***

 _March 17, 2010._

Her hair was longer than it had been a month ago, and the dye had been removed somehow. Some of it had gotten in front of her eyes when the nurse checked up on her. Gently, he moved it out of her face. Her eyes were still closed, and her breathing had gotten steady. In, and out, in, and out. He could see her chest moving up and down with each breath, so small and fragile.

She was safe now, here in the hospital. He wasn't quite sure what had happened. The broken bones, he knew, had been caused by Horn in a fit of rage. The question was, why had Horn been so angry at her? What, exactly, had happened these past few days? Myrddin had been interviewing Hallucca, Paige Bourbon. The woman was mental, quite literally insane. She was distantly related to the old royal family of France, from before Napoleon, and had styled her identity as a villain after that heritage. When she'd had her second trigger event, something had broken inside of her, and she actually started believing she was a queen. Her enemies were transformed into foreign nationals and traitors. Sely's mothers' boyfriend had been one of those 'traitors'. When Hallucca had gotten her hands on Sely, Sely had somehow managed to convince Hallucca that she wasn't a traitor. Hallucca had liked the idea of having the traitor's 'daughter' serve her, and drafted Sely into working for her.

That evening, Sely had managed to sneak out, and found the newly triggered girl, Emma. They'd tried making their way out of town, when Horn had appeared, and started chasing Sely.

Which left the question of where Sely had been before all that happened, why Horn was so angry at her, and what had created the distraction that allowed Sely to sneak out.

Had Sely triggered, did she become a parahuman somewhere during the last few days? Or was she just in the right place at the right time? Emma had been vague about what had happened. The girl had been traumatized, both by the beatings Hallucca's men had given her, and the fact that she'd killed someone. It had been an accident, as well as self-defence, but the teenage mind wasn't very good at rationalizing that kind of situation.

He suddenly realized his hand was still on Sely's head, stroking her hair. It felt soft, almost unnaturally so. Did Hallucca have something to do with that? The woman had been Manton-limited, but the thing about the Manton-limit was that it wasn't really one thing, but rather a collection of similar things, everyone's Manton-limit was slightly different. Perhaps, for Hallucca, the dead material found in hair did not count as part of the human body?

His phone buzzed, a message from Chev. He'd attempted to track what he thought was the mastermind behind the entire situation, and had just returned.

Colin stood up, looking at his daughter one more time before leaving the room. It felt good, to see her lying there. To know that she was safe, and being taken care of. It was weird, feeling like that when he hadn't even known about her existence a little more than a month back.

He found the others in a private room, MP, Assault and Myrddin were still in costume, Edward had gone undercover in a business casual outfit.

"How's your little squirt?" Kate asked.

"Stable, Sleeping." He replied.

"That's good to hear." Myrddin said.

"Find anything?" He asked Edward.

"Some, not much. Like you said, they were doing something at the water treatment plant. I presume that there's some sort of refinement process, activated by people's digestion tracts. I believe the more advanced version of the drug I saw in the escaping perp is some sort of second generation version, refined by people taking the first generation, and then extracted from their waste-matter. I was able to gather that info by tracking him to a seedy bar where he'd tried getting in contact with someone. They didn't want to tell me much, but he was definitely in contact with a bigger player."

"Sounds ominous" Myrddin said.

"I agree, but we don't have enough info to figure out more." Colin said.

"So, what's the plan?" Myrddin asked, falling back into his old role as leader.

"Roidmaster, the guy originally behind these drugs, was active in Brockton Bay for a bit. We managed to scare him off before all of this went down, but some of his old friends might still know where he is." Colin replied.

"I may have some contacts I can talk to." Edward said.

"I'll see whether the PRT has any knowledge they try to keep on the hidden end of things." Myrddin said.

"Not sure if I have anything to add. But call me when you need help." Mouse Protector said.

"I could hit up some old friends, see if they know anything, but they generally don't take kindly to our type." Assault said.

"Well, I guess we can keep in contact when we have more information." Myrddin said. "Bad as the situation had been, it's been nice seeing you guys again without a real Endbringer around."

The rest of them, sans Assault, nodded in agreement.

Colin started standing up. "If we're all done here, I'm going to have a quick talk with Emma and her brother. And again, thanks for coming to help.

"No problem man." Edward said, and the rest nodded as well.

He left the room, making his way towards the room where Emma was, looking after her brother, who was slowly recovering from his experience. After that, he'd need to go have a talk with Annabelle. She'd gotten hurt, chocked with her own clothes. The lack of oxygen had led to some brain damage, although the doctors weren't sure about the extent yet.

At least that meant he would probably get the custody he wanted, he thought grimly.

***

 _May 7, 2010_

Colin's week hadn't been very good. First, he'd gotten the news that Shadow Stalker had been the victim of a brutal kidnapping. He'd gone to the crime scene, investigated the evidence, and they'd tried to track the kidnappers.

They'd lost the tracks on the highway west. Whoever was responsible, they'd either been from out of town, or had done their very best to hide their tracks, going in and out of town with their victim.

That had been his Monday night, and he hadn't gotten a single minute of sleep. He'd been working the entire night, and had only gotten home at nine in the morning. Sely hadn't been there and was, he assumed, at school. So he'd gone to bed to catch up on his rest, only to get woken up by a call from Arcadia. Sely hadn't shown up at school. Thinking she was playing hooky again, she tried that every now and then, he'd checked her room.

Sely's room had been a mess, clothes were spread all over the floor, half read books and magazines were lying around everywhere, and there were like five empty plates on her desk. She wasn't there, and he didn't feel like wading through the muck to look for her.

So, he'd called her on her phone, and she answered that she was staying with a friend, completely disregarding that she was supposed to be in school.

He'd tried to stay calm, but Sely had been in one of her moods, whining and moaning and not telling him where she was.

For a while, he'd thought about tracing the signal and finding her that way, but in the end he'd decided against it. He'd decided to wait a little bit first.

Wednesday afternoon, she'd shown up again. When he asked her where she'd been, she'd gone silent and ran for her room.

On Thursday, the empire had attempted to bust out Hookwolf. Three troopers were heavily wounded, and several more had been hit as well. Luckily, the whole thing had ended with Alabaster getting thrown around by Judas and Brutus. They were good dogs.

So when he settled into his lab on Friday, he hoped the week would come to a slow end, without any annoyances. He checked his calendar. The last Endbringer attack, the Behemoth, had been 2 months ago, hitting the C.U.I . That meant they'd be safe for just a bit more. Was there anything else that could suddenly come up and ruin his day of tinkering?

His phone rang. Of course his phone rang.

He checked the screen. Chevalier. He quickly answered, happy to speak to his friend again.

"Good morning to you Chev" he said.

"Good morning Armsy." Ed replied.

"I'm guessing this isn't just a social call?" he asked.

"It's not, although, the next time you go to the zoo, how about you invite me as well?"

"Kate invited herself, I had nothing to do with that!" he yelled jokingly.

"Yeah, I guessed something like that. Anyway, that's not why I called you." Chevalier said, becoming serious. "One of Assault's old contacts came through, I've got a name."

The Westlake thing, he'd almost forgotten about their background investigation. The few Merchants they'd caught had known very little, too drugged to remember anything about their temporary tinker assistance.

"Is it one you recognize?" he asked.

"Yeah, it is. I thought we'd seen the last of her after the birdcage transport exploded in an attempted prison break, but it looks like Crane the Harmonious is active again."

Crane the Harmonious… A hand-to-hand-combat obsessed woman that had kidnapped teenage capes, and forcefully taught them personalized martial arts techniques.

Well fuck.


	42. Chapter 7,1

**Chapter 7.1**  
 _May 8, 2010_

I kicked off from the ground, and flew up.

Not really flew, I mean, it wasn't an actual jetpack or something like that, but I flew like a meter into the air with no difficulty.

The thing was, Leet's technology was completely bullshit. The thing was, while it looked like anti-gravity technology, it actually was mass cancellation.

In other words, my body had about half the mass, and I clocked in at around forty to fifty pounds in weight. That meant that, besides jumping much higher, I could also run much easier.

The device I'd built consisted of several belts that I had strapped around my torso, and which I could probably repurpose to make other things lighter when necessary.

Probably… They were kinda finicky, since I had to make sure they worked properly without actually hurting me. That meant there were a few design choices that would be sub-optimal for lifting heavy stuff, but they should probably keep working even if I kept growing.

Sure, it'd taken quite a few rare materials to get them going, but Rose had been able to supply my tinkering while she was busy running around setting up the exchange with the mayor.

Which meant that my little grappling hook was now done as well.

It wasn't a real grappling hook in the way Armsmaster had. His was big, bulky, and hooked around things that were strong enough to hold his weight. Walls and other such things. Mine was small, about the size of a large gun. Instead of a hook, it shot what was best described as a little forcefield generator, which would attach to whatever it hit and then strengthen it. That way, I could fire it at almost anything and have it attach without destroying whatever it hit. A piece of shitty drywall would become strong enough to allow me to hurl myself towards it, which became easier because I was so light.

The problem, of course, was that when the grappling hook started pulling me forward, I was flying towards the wall at ever increasing speed.

Which meant I'd need to let go of the grappling hook, and pull myself another way while in midair. Which all lead to going through a large amount of grappling hooks. After all, the little forcefield generator was single use.

I had made two of them so far, one right-handed, one left-handed, which combined with my blueprinting meant I had a total of six at a time.

This was not enough. I needed more, but If I made more, I actually wanted to make them slightly different ones. Faster, slower, with a built-in tazer in the wire maybe. I had lots of great ideas. It'd just take me some time to actually built them.

Tonight though, I'd have to make do with just six of them. Rose was going to meet with mayor Christner to exchange the declaration of independence for a quarter million dollars.

After practicing with my lower weight some more, I heard rose suddenly walk around downstairs, on the second floor of my secret base. It was weird to hear, she didn't actually make a sound when teleporting in, so it was just someone that started walking all of a sudden. I heard her come up the stairs into the area I'd transformed into my workshop.

"Hey, you done yet?" she asked.

"Yup." I replied, making a backflip to demonstrate. Sure, my landing was rather bad and involved an involuntary split, but the idea was there.

"Should be easy. I make the drop, get the cash, and we're done." She said.

"So what's my role?"

"You're the lookout and the back-up. preferably just the lookout." She replied, throwing a small Bluetooth headset thingy at me, as well as a burner phone. "We'll stay in contact with these."

"Really?" I asked. "Seriously? This is what we're going with?"

She looked at me, trying not to slap herself.

Had she asked, I could've easily rigged up a much better, more secure version. But whatevs. We could do this.

*** Triumph ***

When Rory's father had first asked him for his help, he'd thought the man was insane. First of all, the museum losing one of its pieces wasn't the mayors responsibility. Second, they could just ask one of the actual protectorate members to make the trade for them. Third… He wasn't quite sure about it, but there was bound to be a third point somewhere.

His father, of course, had replied that the declaration of independence was the cornerstone of Brocktonian culture, and that losing it on his watch meant he would most definitely not be up for re-election. Rory had replied that no-one actually gave a shit about some bullshit declaration, and his father had shown him the protestors saying that they were now technically part of England again, and were demanding free tea.

At least crazy Englishmen were better than Neo-Nazis.

And since the criminal had decided on no cops, he was here in his civvies, as the mayor's almost adult son with a well-defined not at all unnaturally enhanced physique.

So there they were, with a suitcase filled with a quarter mil, somewhere in the docks, not too far away from the boardwalk. His father was wearing his suit, the three-piece he wore when he wanted to be imposing. Rory was just wearing a hoodie that hid his muscles.

The abandoned warehouse they found themselves in was lit by a single lamp, dangling from the ceiling by the electrical cord. It was filled with old pallets and stands, which gave the whole thing an eerie feel. Luckily, it was dry, the roof still holding most of the rain away. The rattling sound however, didn't give him a lot of confidence in his ability to see things coming. Someone could be sneaking around here without him hearing it.

After a fifteen minute wait, a woman suddenly appeared roughly twenty metres in front of him. She was wearing loose, dark-grey clothes with a bandana wrapper around most of her head. She was holding a cardboard tube, which presumably held the declaration.

"You've got the money?" She asked. She sounded young, not much older than Rory.

"You've got the goods?" his father asked. The man had watched too many mafia series.

"You first. I said one person." the woman replied.

Rory looked at his father. Of course he hadn't been informed of this.

"Just my son." His father replied.

"I can see that. Doesn't mean I'm happy about it." the woman said.

Rory looked around, trying to see if this was a trick of some kind. The entire building was dark, except for the small area where they were standing, and he couldn't hear anyone. Still, he had the feeling he was being watched.

"See? 250,000. Nonsequential." His father said, opening the suitcase.

"Can't actually see that with this light, but I trust you're smart enough not to cross me." The woman said.

Rory couldn't help but think about how damn boring this actually was. In movies, exchanges were filled with tension, adrenaline, double-crosses. Here, in reality he just had to yawn.

The woman showed the declaration, handling it with care, his father inspected it, the woman inspected the money. It was all so boring he was starting to fall asleep.

Eventually, he found an old chair and had a sit, yawning again.

Eventually, his father concluded his dealings.

"Hey, Rory, you've got to go to school tomorrow!" his father said. He was just so damn tired. In the meantime, trying to find the energy to stand up, he saw the woman pop out of existence, disappearing with the suitcase. He thought he heard something moving near the roof, but he was just too damn tired to give a shit.

*** Sophia ***

 _May 9, 2010._

Sophia woke up with a shock, still sweating from her nightmare. She'd dreamt that someone had shot her mother, and punched her stupid brother to death. She was the only one allowed to punch her brother.

She opened her eyes, and remembered that it hadn't been a dream. The pristine mountain forest surrounding her was a stark contrast to the pain that filled her muscles. Every muscle in her body hurt, even the ones that she hadn't even known existed, to say nothing of the bruises.

She remembered trying to run away last night, sneaking away. Then, someone had chased her. She didn't remember much more, just someone tasing her, followed by waking up here again, Sleeping on the rocks, covered by a blanket.

Birds were gently singing, unable to shut up for just a moment. Sophia sat up and looked around, and eventually saw the woman sitting on the rock.

Crane. She called herself. Sophia had heard of her, a couple of years ago, the woman had been arrested for something. She couldn't quite remember what for, but Crane had been send off to the birdcage. Something to do with kids, she was sure.

The woman was eating breakfast, eggs and bread or something, and she hadn't reacted to Sophia waking up yet.

The woman reminded her of a cat. She was a predator, and Sophia was her prey. But instead of taking her down, Crane just played with her, as if it was all a game. It was fucked up, it wasn't how the world should be. Sophia, Shadow Stalker, was better than her. this was some no-life criminal, and she was a vigilante. People feared her, no-one started shit in her territory because they knew she would come for them.

She was the top dog, and people respected her for it. Gave her the space she needed. And when they didn't, if they kept trying to defy her like pathetic little Hebert, like the addict that had attacked her brother, then she took them down.

But Crane wasn't taking her down. Or rather, whenever Crane took her down, she'd then turn around and be all fucked up about it. One moment Crane would be smacking her into the floor, somehow always knowing when she would turn into her solid form, and the next the woman would be treating her abrasions, fussing with her hair while she hurt too much to stop her.

Her hair was short now. A few days ago, three, maybe two. Crane had given her a pair of scissors, and demanded that she cut off her ponytail. Shadow Stalker had refused, charging the woman with the new weapon. Crane had reacted to this by easily dodging her, grabbing her ponytail before she could shift, and giving it a jank that made her fall down. This had repeated itself more times than she could count before Sophia had decided to cut it off to make the pain stop, after which the fucked up bitch had hugged her.

The woman wasn't always there, Sophia knew. Sometimes she would be somewhere else, sometimes she would be talking to someone on what looked like a tinkertech phone. Something about subjects, and training them. Sophia was pretty sure that that wasn't about her. Crane always referred to her as a student, not a subject. So who were these subjects? Who was the man Crane kept talking to? Were there any other 'students'?

Crane was humming to herself, and Sophia saw a chance. She shifted to her shadow-state, and slowly stood up, careful not to disturb the airflow. She'd cried out in frustration once, when Crane had somehow found her while she was in her shadow-state in the complete darkness of a cave. Airflow, the woman had said.

It made sense. When in this state, Sophia breathed by just absorbing the air. So that meant she wasn't insubstantial, there was still something that happened, so the air would flow differently around her.

Slowly, she snuck around, stepping and floating lightly around Crane, staying at her back, getting ready to strike. The woman was spooning some sort of bland-looking gruel into her mouth, it looked disgusting, like what a homeless person would get at the soup kitchen. Pathetic…

She readied herself, turning her body, and launched herself into the air, flying towards Crane, changing into her solid state at the last moment, when a roundhouse kick would hit her straight in the head. The woman hadn't even noticed she was there, this would work.

Until it didn't. the moment she started turning solid again, Crane manifested her sphere, changing the trajectories around it, and used that to grab Sophia's leg and smack her into the ground. Sophia reacted by shifting back into her shadow state, but the woman just took her plate of piping hot gruel and dumped it on her.

Unlike the transient flames created by Leet's shitty fireball thrower, the wet gruel was able to deposit a lot of energy inside of her. It felt hot, burning. Not as painful as electricity, but it shocked herself into her solid state nonetheless.

Sohpia found herself lying in Crane's lap in an uncomfortable position, still in half a stranglehold. Quick as lightning, Crane dismissed her orb, and cupper Sophia's face with her hand.

"Sophia Sophia Sophia… why must you always be so aggressive?" Crane asked.

She knew what it meant wen Crane went all sweet on her. It meant that Crane had decided the fight was over. If she attempted to continue fighting now. Crane would see that as an insult. Instead of just fighting back, Crane would start punishing her. Sophia still remembered yesterdays punishment. The only thing worse than the pain of her overexerted muscles had been Crane's promise that what she would do if Sophia gave up would be worse.

No, this wasn't the moment for fighting physically.

"You killed my mother!" she shouted, not as loud as she wished she had. She just couldn't bring up the energy for it.

Crane started brushing her fingers through Sophia's roughly cut hair, and looked down at her face. With her free hand, Crane straightened out Sophia's body, making her position more comfortable.

"Oh Sophia, are you still angry about that? I thought you didn't care? Didn't you say that they would never understand you? Didn't you say you hated their weakness, their pathetic little nine to five lives?" Crane replied.

That had been true. She had said that, multiple times. Her big brother's stupid bullshit, her moms rules, the crying of her little sister.

The thing was, when a teenage girl said that she wished her mother would just die already… well, that didn't necessarily mean it was true.

But then, if she wanted to say that… she'd have to admit that she'd been wrong about them. She'd have to admit that, even though they were prey, they still mattered to her.

"It's the principle of the thing." Sophia answered.

Was that disapproval she saw in Crane's expression?

"Well Sophia, I asked you to come with me the day before, and you defied me. I had to do something, it's the principle of the thing." the reply came.

Slowly, Crane moved Sophia so that she was sitting in Crane's lap, even though she was far too old for it. One hand wrapped around Sophia's stomach, she was handed a plate of food to eat.

Silently, she shoved it in. The gruel wasn't very good, and too hot for her, but it wasn't as bad as it looked. It was filling, at least.

While she was eating, Crane had used her other hand to grab a pair of scissors.

"Sit still Sophia." She commanded.

Knowing better than to disobey her, Sophia held her position as best as she could, barely even breathing. Slowly, Crane started snipping away at her hair, styling it, probably. It had been a mess after she'd blindly cut it, but not knowing what it looked like didn't bring her any comfort.

Eventually, after what felt like an hour of sitting still like a mouse in front of a lion. Crane was done. She pushed Sophia forward, and motioned for her to stand up. Then, crane stood in front of her, once again holding her palm against the side of Sophia's face, guiding her head to make her look Crane in the eyes.

"Now, Sophia, you're going to perform the Kata I taught you a hundred times. Slowly, precisely. And none of that silly business with running away. I know what you are doing, and I won't be so lenient next time. Understood?"

Sophia nodded carefully. She'd always prided herself on her stamina, her athleticism. Her ability to keep going when others would stop. Crane, however, pushed her even further, always aiming to push her too far, past what she could do. After ten repeats, she'd start to get tired. After fifty, she'd be exhausted. After seventy-five, she would stop being able to do them properly. After ninety, she'd fall on the ground, unable to continue. At least, that was what had happened in previous exercises.

Then, when Crane returned, she'd judge whether or not Sophia had tried hard enough. If she surmised that Sophia was genuinely exhausted, she'd get all pedo on her, hugging her, stuff like that. If Crane judged that she had not tried hard enough…. Sophia didn't want to think about that one. Those exercises hurt even more. And if she didn't do those…. If she had learned anything in her week with Crane, it was that she could always make it hurt more…

After she'd nodded. Crane took a step forward, kissing her on the forehead for way longer than was appropriate. "You can do it Sophia, I know you can." The woman said.

She couldn't do it. Sophia knew she couldn't finish a hundred of the exercises. But then again, she also knew what would happen if she didn't try her very best.

Slowly, but steadily, she started the exercise. Part of it reminded her of those old Karate movies, but this one was special, every so many steps, she had to go into her shadow state, and back again, and halfway in between. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. In addition to that, she'd need to take care to breathe only at specific points, sometimes going through long stretches where she breathed only by quickly shifting in and out of her shadow form.

After about five minutes, she completed the first of the repetitions. This was going to take a long time.

*** Dragon ***

 _May 10, 2010._

Dragon went through the data, double-checking the interplay between the different systems. Others would call the task arduous, for Dragon, it was simply mathematics, easy, quick. Her algorithms didn't have to spend time emulating a mind that would solve the problem, they simply did. It was one of the few things Richter hadn't limited her in, pure mathematics. Addition, multiplication, etcetera.

Years ago, before Dragon had been created, there had been satellites flying around the earth. A man stood on the moon once. Now, the skies were largely empty, a few network satellites were still active, but the spy satellites that had once dotted the sky had all been destroyed, either having crashed down, having internal errors making them unusable, or crashing into other space-debris.

Only a fool would think it a coincidence. The Simmurgh had more than one way of working the odds, somehow always striking at space programs and other such things.

Thus, the new design, based upon old spy-planes, stealth technology, and optical equipment. It wasn't as much a battlesuit as it was an eye in the sky, but its programming didn't count as an AI, thus Dragon was able to create it.

The data all checked out, even after checking a third time, and Dragon felt what could best be described as boredom.

She liked to think that it wasn't the same as the boredom of humans, the involuntary reaction created by impatience. No, here boredom was there simply because she could be doing something, but wasn't sure what she would be doing then.

Discretely, she pinged Collin's lab. No-one there. She would've liked to talk to him. It was pleasant, talking to the man. He was smart, driven, and good with technology, plus, he could be funny when he tried.

Maybe she could bother his daughter instead? Dragon checked her accounts, but found no activity. Feeling bored, she decided to check the girl's PHO activity. After all, she suspected that the girl was a parahuman, perhaps she had left tracks on the internet.

A search of her profile found nothing too interesting. A few messages exchanged with accounts from Westlake, her friends there probably. Some activity in the thread about Argenta, which was logical, the two were friends, but little else. Collin's theory that the girl was afraid of parahumans seemed be more likely. Most fourteen year olds posted much more on their forum accounts.

She sent a message to her web-trawling bot, telling it to look up books and articles on childrearing and teenagers. Collin had admitted that the girl didn't spend all her nights at home, and was skipping school every now and then. Had he been doing something to scare her off? Colin seemed to think so at least, and had gotten even hesitant about revealing his real job to her.

Dragon disagreed with him on that one, waiting for too long could only increase the shock when he finally revealed it to Sely. But the man could be stubborn, that was one of the things she liked in him, just as much as she disliked it.

Her metaphorical eyes fell on one of the last comments Sely had left. It was on a thread about the theft of the Declaration of Independence.

Thinking she had missed something, Dragon quickly searched the relevant news websites, but found nothing. Until she thread again. It wasn't the real declaration, but rather a weird fake one from Brockton Bay, stolen from the museum. From what she gathered, people were suspecting that the mayor was trying to keep it hushed up, hoping it wouldn't hurt his chances for re-election next year. She searched, but couldn't find much more on it, someone had indeed kept it silent, the exhibit being "temporarily out of order" according to the museums website, and the latest news was that the exhibit was once again in order.

Her newest creation pinged her. It had completed fuelling, and was ready to go. She launched it towards the American Midwest, the area where, according to Armsmasters source, which she suspected was ultimately Assault's source, Crane was located.

Sophia Hess might have been a dangerous vigilante with a bad habit of excessive violence, but no-one deserved a fate like that.

*** Grue ***

Brian looked over the other Undersiders. Still not quite sure what to think of this entire team thing. He just hoped the boss came through, helping him deal with Aisha's situation.

There was Trainwreck, probably the oldest member of their group, although no-one really knew how old the mutated cape was. he had a strange form of amnesia, and no real idea about when he was born. Trainwreck thought himself important, and wanted to be the one in charge, but the rest of the group didn't really listen to him. Most of the jobs came through their actual boss and his sources.

The other adult on their team was Circus. Brian wasn't sure what to think about her, or him. The whole gender thing was needlessly complicated when Circus was around, and the man, or woman, had insisted on being both depending on the situation. Still, she was a professional, and although she once told him she worked alone, the boss apparently paid enough to get her on the team. She was good at what she did, but tended to go off on her own part of the job, leaving the rest of them to do the dirty work.

Then there was Alec, Regent. Perhaps the most underestimated member of their group. Sure, he wasn't flashy, he couldn't do anything about a group of well-armed guys, but he was an insurance policy. Anyone, no matter who, that tried to take them down on his own, Regent could counter. Speedsters, Tinkers, Brutes and Blasters, none of them were immune to falling on their own ass repeatedly, and super strength meant very little if you couldn't do anything with it.

The last member of their little group, he was most sceptical about. Glyph, also known as Theresa, Tess, and, last but most certainly not least, Rune.

The girl had told him she'd left the empire, but he could still see it in her eyes every now and then, the eyes of a racist little fuck. Maybe what Circus said was right, maybe it was indeed hard to leave behind a life of indoctrination, but Circus was white, she didn't have to deal with Glyph's bullshit.

It was all for Aisha though. Even this.

Things had been escalating between the Empire and the ABB lately, and Hookwolf's capture had only made it worse. Thus, Faultline, ever the savvy businesswoman, had called a meeting in the seediest bar of the seediest part of town.

They'd arrived early, and sat themselves down in the booths. Trainwreck had said he wanted to go sit at the main table, but the rest of them had disagreed. They were new, lacked importance and reputation, and their relatively low profile made things easier right now. They didn't need to cause a stir here.

Slowly, some of the other players in the city started trickling in. Leet, still without Uber, the PRT prison was getting rather crowded, sat down in the corner, looking hopeful for some reason.

Faultline sat down at the table, her crew taking a booth. Kaiser made a chair for himself with his power. Purity was noticeably absent, Glyph had told them why, and he could see Krieg glaring at them, at Glyph.

Lung entered, shirtless, Oni Lee behind him, and took a third seat. Shortly after that, Coil entered the room. A new player, deceptively slippery. He hadn't heard much about the guy yet, and that worried him.

The merchants had decided to show up as well. At least most of them. Skidmark was noticeably missing, properly high of his ass. Their contingent decided not to take a seat at the table either.

Finally, two newcomers entered the building. A young woman, twenty or something, and a girl that looked to be about Regent's age. The woman was wearing a black suit and a scarf wrapped around her head. The girl was wearing a black shirt with belts around it, and a smooth reflective helmet covered her head. A new Tinker?

The woman tried to take a seat the table, while the girl went for a booth.

"The fuck you think you are?" Lung asked, outraged that an unknown was trying to sit at the table.

"Hmmm, let's see." The woman said. "The best damn thief in the business?"

"Never heard of you." Lung replied angrily.

"Well, that's the whole point isn't it?" the woman replied. "PRT calls me Ocean, that over there is my new partner in crime, Gadget."

The girl in the chrome helmet gave Lung a quick cheeky wave.

"Ocean? I've heard of you." Faultline said. "What brings you to our town? Besides stealing the declaration of independence of course?"

"Nice pads, warm winters, great beaches, what's not to like?" Ocean replied. "Plus, I got bored of traveling around all the time. Felt like getting settled."

And just like that, the woman sat down at the table.

"We're not here for art thieves, though I must ask, do you do requests?" Coil said.

"If the price is right. Of course, I also do the opposite, getting paid not to rob someone." Ocean replied.

"Not why we're here." Kaiser chimed in.

"Well then, let us get to the first order of business shall we?" Coil said. "First of all, there's the case of Shadow Stalker. My sources tell me she was kidnapped from her home."

"Someone's been breaking the unwritten rules then. " Faultline interjected.

People looked around the room accusingly. Most people didn't like it when they heard about someone breaking the rules. Who knew who was next?

"No need to worry" Coil said in his disgustingly smooth voice. "It's not anyone here. The PRT suspects Crane the Harmonious."

"The pedophile cape?" Kaiser asked.

"Not… exactly." Faultline replied. "But yes, she does have an exclusive interest in teenage parahumans. I'd advise you to keep a close eye on yours, but…" She nodded towards the undersiders.

Crane. Grue had heard about her. She'd been one of the fucked up ones, with a bad reputation. Not because of body count, or excessive brutality. Simply because she targeted children and made them love her somehow. Going after kids was a good way to get people to after you, even villains like the people here.

The rest of the meeting was uneventful. Talk about escalation and territory, posturing, that sort of thing. Of note, however, was what happened after the meeting. Most of them left in their own groups, but he saw Leet approach Kaiser, and Coil talking with Ocean. Interesting…


	43. Chapter 7,2

**Chapter 7.2**  
 _May 12, 2010_

"Oh yes of course, that's a great idea!" Argenta exclaimed. "It's not like that's way too much collateral damage for a simple drug dealer."

"Since when do you even care? I'm just saying, we could take him down easypeasy if we do it my way. Think of the looks on their faces!" Glory Girl replied.

"Oh yeah sure, their faces. Can't help but remember that we're the ones that'll have to look at Piggy's face as well." Argenta replied.

"C'mon Gal, you gotta be with me on this one, it'll be totally worth it!" Glory Girl said, finally bringing him into the conversation.

On one hand, Argenta had a point. Going straight through the wall of the old warehouse would probably destroy it completely, and Piggy would get angry for no reason. She was pissed at Argenta anyway, mostly for the Hookwolf thing, and just looking for an excuse.

On the other hand, he couldn't very well say no to Victoria's beautiful face, she'd be angry at him for at least a week.

"Help me out here Eric?" he said, trying to put the decision on the fourth member of their impromptu patrol team.

"Nah, way too much fun seeing you trying to safe yourself." He replied. Dean didn't need to be an Empath to see how much fun the guy was having with the situation.

"Lemme guess, you're only bringing your boyfriend in because you can't win any other way!" Argenta said.

"At least I can get a boyfriend! I don't have to cover my entire body with armor!" Vicky shouted.

"Yeah, because I'm not a skank!" Argenta yelled back.

"Better a skank than a bitch!"

"You're a bitch!"

"No, you're a bitch!"

"No, you're a bitch!"

"No you!"

Dean's observation of the catfight was interrupted when Eric tapped him on the shoulder, pointing at the running merchants.

"Girls, its go time." He said, hoping that taking down the gang members would help them stop being idiots. It probably wouldn't, but it was worth a try.

Almost immediately, Glory Girl went after the dealers, and Shielder followed

"C'mon Gallant, she's gonna start gloryhogging again." Argenta yelled, unleashing her power and floating after them, electrical tendrils extending between her armour and the ground. Deciding he couldn't be the only one left standing behind, he activated his power armor's mobility suite. It wasn't very extensive, but it helped him manoeuvre quite well.

When he caught up with the rest of them, Vicky had already taken most of the dealers down, a few others being blocked by Shielder, and Argenta catching one with the insulated cords that made up her skirt.

Vicky held up one of the Merchants, a guy with crooked teeth and very little experience showering. "Hey Gallant, I left one for you!"

"Nonononono please stop her please please please…." The guy said. He was absolutely terrified.

"Just… put him down? I think I see some brown…" Dean said to his girlfriend.

"Well duhh, she's a savage, of course he's afraid." Argenta chimed in.

"Hey I heard that!" Glory girl yelled back, dropping the drug dealer.

Gallant quickly clicked his earbud, calling it in to Vista at the console before he got caught up in another fight between the two girls.

***Gadget***

 _May 13, 2010_

"I'm telling you, she thinks she's awesome, floating around the school and all, but she's even worse in costume…" Emma complained.

Sely just sat there, still uncomfortable with the topic. Emma could understand why. Glory Girl's aura was very polarizing, and while she had somehow manoeuvred herself in such a way that it just tried to force her to like the girl, Sely was afraid enough to get hit by the other side of the cape's aura. Thus, every time the bitch came floating down a hallway, Sely got quiet. Even bringing up the brutish brute made her uncomfortable.

"C'mon S, can't have a good Vicky-bashing one my own."

"Me and dad are going to see mom next week." Sely said. The depression clear on her face. Whatever had cheered her up the last week or two obviously wasn't enough to outweigh that.

"Oh… how's she doing?" she asked.

"Dad says she's probably not getting better… I don't see any difference though…" Sely replied.

"Sely… do you really mean that?"

"Useless then, useless now." She said.

She slung an arm around Sely, not entirely sure what to say. She'd heard the stories when her mother had gotten drunk. The town slut, a different guy each month, the boozy-sloozy. Annabelle hadn't had a very good reputation. She could only imagine what living with her must have been like. It must've been the complete opposite of her family. Although… it was probably what made Sely so cool. Having a shitty mother had its upsides as well.

"So they'll be transporting Hookwolf pretty soon." She said. "He's going all the way to the birdcage."

"That's pretty sweet. But won't they try to break him out?" Sely asked.

"Yeah, which is why we're doing practices and shit, riding superdogs is really fun, especially because Gallant keeps falling off."

"Is he that bad at it?"

"Not really, I think Rachel just keeps secretly telling Brutus to do that. G is all weird around her all the time. Not sure why. Maybe he prefers her to Bitchface?"

"Could be… dogs are cool"

Emma stretched on the small bench they were sitting on. The weather was nice, so they'd decided to go sit outside during their break, with the added benefit that no-one would be able to overhear them here. She thought about how great it would be if Gallant and Hellhound started dating. For one thing, it would mean icky Vicky would stop trying to barge in on all their patrols.

"Hey, Em, there's a guy waving at you." Sely said.

She looked where Sely was pointing, and saw Rory standing there. She waved for him to come over.

How Sely knew Rory wasn't waving at her instead, she didn't know. Or rather, she did know, and it had something to do with all teenage boys being pigs, even teenage boys who were also beefcake. Also, it was mostly an assumption Sely had her good features too, although she probably just needed some growing into them.

As Rory came close, Sely got quiet all of a sudden. Emma thought about it for a second. Rory was pretty muscle-bound. He worked out, and he was technically a brute, probably? Enhanced physique, she thought she remembered. But there wasn't any real reason for her to be afraid, right? Maybe it was something else. She was most definitely staring at the guy.

"Hey Ems, you got a minute?" he asked.

"Sure, sup?" she replied. Rory looked at Sely for a second, who just looked straight back, after a few seconds, an unsettling look came over Rory. He was probably wondering why she looked familiar.

"It's ehmm, about the new girl? You got a minute to talk?"

"This again? Seriously Rory, everyone likes her but you." She replied.

It was about Rachel… again… For some reason, Rory had some weird problem with the girl. He said it was because she used to be a villain, but… Emma had the sneaking suspicion that it was mostly because Rachel spend most of her patrols either with her adoptive parents, or helping Armsmaster with his investigations. That meant that, while he was the leader of the wards, and she was a ward, he didn't really have much to say about her. The girl was nice enough, especially when she had her visor on, and you couldn't help but love Brutus and Judas once they got used to you. Rory was just being an ass about it.

Just for a second, Emma thought of updating her classifications. Perhaps she should upgrade Carlos to 'full beefcake' status, and think of Rory as the backup.

"Ems, can we talk about this in private its…" He looked towards Sely with his eyes, thinking he was being all stealthy about it.

"So are you floaty or shouty?"Sely said in return.

The look on Rory's face was amazing.

"I don't know what you… I mean... what made you think…"

"Cause you're obviously not the nerd or space-Bieber, and you're not a middle-school girl either, and I don't see any dogs."

"Rory… she knows, okay. She was there in Westlake."

"Oh… I see…" he said, still flustered.

"Also, Sely, meet shouty. Or Rory."

Sely stood up, and started walking around Rory, inspecting him in her own peculiar way. Rory just looked uncomfortable with the situation.

"I'm sorry Ems, but I just don't think he's right for you. Too old for one thing. Are you sure you can't just chase of Vicky and take the loot? I mean, Sparkypants and Moneypants just sounds right."

No… she did not just….

No-one called Argenta sparkypants. Absolutely no-one. Except maybe Assault, and also Sely, and some of the PRT guys, but no-one else…

"Sparkypants? This a new thing?" Rory asked, having collected enough of his thoughts to return to the conversation.

"Nope, been her name since she started."

"No it's not Sely."

"Yes it is Sparkypants."

"It doesn't even make any sense! I wear a skirt!"

"A metal skirt, covering pants! Sparkypants!" Sely taunted, hiding behind a confused Rory, ready to run away.

"Well, you're a…"

She stopped before completing her sentence, remembering Rory was there. Guessing was okay, hinting was okay, but she'd decided for herself that directly telling secrets like that was most certainly not okay. So she wouldn't say it while Rory was around.

Sely was already halfway to the school building, damn that girl was fast. Instead, Emma grabbed her phone, and send a single text to Sely, the worst insult she could think of, the one that would connect her with the likes of Chris. And also Armsmaster, but he didn't count. "Nerdface."

"So… about Rachel." Rory asked, still going on about it.

"Can you just stop it Rory? She's had a bad time, she's doing better, maybe stop complaining until there's something that didn't happen years ago?"

"I… that's not even what I wanted to talk about! You know what, forget it." Rory answered angrily, starting to walk away.

The fuck had gotten into him?

*** Gadget ***

"So… Remember sleepyface?"I asked.

"What, the mayor's kid? The one you hit with your sleep-ray?" Rose said.

"Yeah, turns out he's Triumph."

"Fuck… that could've ended differently. I knew something was wrong with that…"

"Couldn't we have asked for more when he came with back-up? Tell him we were altering the deal?"

"What, do the star wars thing? Only if you make me a lightsaber." Rose joked.

"You say that, but… I could probably…. Wait, no, wouldn't work. Beam would just keep going and going unless I capped it off with something but then you couldn't stab anyone with it because you'd only hit with the cap, not the laserblade itself. Now sure, I could probably use, like, plasma or something, but then you might as well just carry around a flamethrower. Which, thinking about it, would be pretty awesome, only you'd need to make sure the important stuff didn't get burned, So I could probably make some fireproofing stuff, but then you'd need to spray it on whatever we were stealing, meaning it became less valuable. Maybe if we got a non-reactive chemical, but then we'd need…"

"Speaking of fire resistance, I acquired a present for you!" Rose said, grabbing something from a bag. Then, all of a sudden, she threw a grenade at me. I catched it, and absorbed it before it could explode on me.

Fuck… that thing was amazing. It didn't really explode, just… released the chemicals inside. And the chemicals, they were absolutely amazing.

"Containment foam? Where'd you even…. Forget I asked, I can guess."

"I know right? Didn't manage to get the counter-chemical though. You think you can make it?"

I thought about it for a second. Thinking about how the chemical would expand when exposed to air, how to counteract that. I could figure out a couple of ways to do it. Counteract the bonds, de-aerate… I could probably create a self-sustaining reaction that would destroy the entire thing with a single drop, infecting the foam in such a way that it would become its own anti-thesis.

"Need some paper…" I said, still thinking about the subject. After a few seconds, Rose pushed a piece of paper and a pen into my hands. I needed to write some stuff down.

Given the foam and optical patterns… could I? Probably, but there were some things I'd need to repurpose. The properties that made it fire-resistant, electronically insulating and stretchy also made it white-beigeish in appearance. If I removed those, kept the quickly expanding aerogel at its core. Yeah, that would probably work.

My hand raced over the paper, placing notes and writing down formulas. Some of the stretchy properties needed to remain, it wouldn't do to have people break bones when running into it on accident. And I needed a lot of it to expand quickly. Delivery mechanisms then…. Maybe a spray of some sort? Or pellets? Tiny pellets you could roll over the ground that would spread out that way? Throw them against a wall and quickly create extra? But I'd never managed to get more than five of any single thing, so I'd need to make the pellets big enough to be effective in low volumes. I could probably make extra, but I had the feeling my power wouldn't like it if I tried to cheat by placing twenty pellets into a single container. It would probably only blueprint the container or something.

After a while, I looked up, noticing it had gotten dark outside. In front of me was a semi-cold pizza that had apparently been lying there for a while. I checked my phone. Dad had send me a message asking me where I had been, telling me he was sorry for whatever he had done. I got ready to return a message saying I got distracted. Maybe I could say I'd been at a movie? That'd explain why I hadn't replied to him earlier.

"Was at movie, couldn't answer phone, got pizza."

That would probably work. I looked back at the pizza, and quickly shoved some in my mouth. Rose had left while I was in my tinker fugue, so I wrote up a quick shopping list. Hopefully, she'd have the stuff I needed next time I was able to drop by, and we'd be able to get some more jobs done.

We'd made some contacts at the big meeting with all the local villains. Coil had his eyes set on some shitty modern arts painting, and given us fifty k to make sure we didn't interfere with his operations. Faultline had given us her card, saying something about future business opportunities, Lung had growled stuff with a horrible accent, and the Undersiders hadn't said much at all until the clown girl got in a fight with Rose about the best type of security system afterwards. Apparently, they were more of the smash & grab type, hitting up places aggressively. I guess it worked out for them.

Kaiser… well, we had decided not to do business with people who wanted to be literally Hitler. We wouldn't help do the crazy shit anyway, but stealing stuff for Nazi's just wasn't okay. They'd probably want stuff like Hitler's car anyway. Or some piece of modern art that was just a completely white canvas.

So, Rose was making a plan for a raid on the Forsberg Gallery, trying to find out if anyone else wanted some of the stuff in there, and I was preparing some tech in my spare time. I'd missed a few days of school here and there, and didn't want my dad to get suspicious.

Part of that was a communication system that worked with whispers and stuff like that, allowing for easy communication. They worked locally with each other, so I could just pump a couple of sets out and have comms for up to five people. The other part was trying to improve the software for my drones. It was harder than I'd expected, because I'd made a lot of shortcuts that made the programming specific to what I had wanted to do back then. That seemed to be a pattern in the stuff I made, it tended to be difficult to repurpose. Maybe something to do with my specialty? I hadn't really thought about it, mostly just building whatever came to mind, but most of my stuff did get kind of single purpose. Plus, it wasn't like any of it was big, like power armor or flying mechsuits or stuff like that. Maybe my specialty had a thing where stuff had to work well with my blueprinting power? That kind of made sense.

But first, I needed to get home. And also practice manoeuvring. I grabbed my outfit, including the mass-reduction belts, and readied a pair of hookshots. I'd made two more variants of the hookshot. One supercharged, reeling in at an even faster rate, and one with a smaller integrity field, which mean that if it hit something small, it would pull the thing to me instead. That brought the total up to three times two times three equals eighteen, so I could probably spend about half a minute swinging around in mid-air a day. That meant making my way out of my base and trough the docks at a ridiculous pace, and then having to wait for the bus to get back home.

Hidden behind my helmet, I fired the first at the top of a nearby warehouse. Then, getting reeled in towards it, I launched a second at the opposite side of the street, and let go of the first one before hitting the building it was reeling me towards. That gave me a nice arc while still getting reeled towards the second building. I looked ahead. Two buildings on opposite sides of the street, one a little higher than the other. I grabbed a third hookshot, aiming it just below the roof of the smaller building. Then, just before reaching it, I grabbed a high-powered hookshot, launched it to the building on the other side's highest part, and gave myself a small upwards boost. Using that, I landed on top of the lower of the building. Or maybe it was more like semi-controlled stumbling. But that was the entire point of practicing anyway.

The manoeuvre went down relatively okay, so I had the ascending part down. Now I needed to find out how to properly get down again. The problem was that, when ascending, I could bleed off momentum by going up. When going down, I couldn't exactly do that. Sure, I could slowly go forward, and get a running landing in, but that took a while, and wasn't a quick solid landing. Maybe I could make a new variant to launch at streetlights or something that would slowly let me down after reaching it? Or get some sort of inertial absorber that allowed me to featherfall? I was really light, so I could take a bit of a beating when landing, but not so much as to jump down from roofs willy nilly. Or I could just strap a pogo stick to my legs or something. But then that wouldn't be very silent.

And if I made a hookshot that could let me down again, I could probably also use it inside to ascend to the roof or go down on a mission. It was a good idea, but I didn't really have the time to create it while on this roof.

Instead, I targeted one of the lines hanging over the street, slowly reeling myself towards it, swinging in an arc under it. Then, when moving horizontally, I shot at the next cable further along the street. Three more, and I'd bled off most of my vertical momentum. Now to slow down. I turned around in mid-air, shooting another cable that was far below the maximum range. The hookshot couldn't catch all the force, and started slowly unreeling rather than reeling back up. That was enough, and I let it go, landing on the ground in a stumble.

Maneuvering like this was a bitch, but it was fucking awesome as well! Now, to dump my shit and find a bus.


	44. Chapter 7,3

**Chapter 7.3**  
 _May 14, 2010_

"Director Piggot." He greeted.

"Armsmaster." She replied. "What is it?"

"I've been thinking about the upcoming transport. Hookwolf's."

"What of it?"

"We both know Kaiser is going to try and get him out, he can't afford to lose the guy. We can also presume he has sources on the inside."

"Are you accusing my men of corruption?" she asked, accusingly.

"We both know there are noticeable white supremacist sentiments both in the regular police and amongst your group. That's not what this is about."

"Of course… So, what is it?"

It could be rather difficult to deal with Piggot. He was quite sure the woman didn't really like capes. To be sceptical about her PRT troopers was, in her eyes, to say that the Protectorate was better than the PRT, which she didn't like, no matter how true it was.

"I'll be heading to Wyoming with my daughter for the weekend. I was thinking about stopping by Philadelphia on the way back."

"And pick up some back-up that Kaiser wouldn't know about." Piggot completed.

"Exactly." He replied.

"Go ahead, it probably wouldn't hurt. But this is your idea, and your operation. Understood?"

"I understand director. I'll see you later." He replied, leaving the office. The woman was far too obsessed with playing politics for his preferences. Trying to deflect blame and claim victories for herself. It honestly got rather boring after a while.

Done for the day, he headed to one of the locker rooms to remove his armour, in the meantime sending a message to Edward on his private phone. Then, he got into his car, and checked his phone. Sely had send him a message that she'd gotten home, and packed her bag. Chev just gave him a simple "Meet you there?"

Of course he'd decided to invite himself over. It was probably Kate's fault anyway. He returned an affirmative, and started his drive.

Eventually, he parked his car in front of the house, and went in. Sely was sitting in front of her laptop, watching some cat video or something.

"You ready?" he asked, as he went to grab his bags.

"Yeah…" she replied. She really wasn't looking forward to this, and he could understand it. Annabelle's brain injury hadn't turned her into a better person, and from what few things Sely had told him about her, she mostly ignored her daughter before she'd gotten her injury. Now she blamed Sely for everything that had happened to her, starting with her pregnancy and ending with Hallucca's attack on her.

The worst part was, he wasn't entirely sure how much of that was the brain injury, and how much was just her being a deplorable person.

When he returned from his room, Sely had packed up her laptop and grabbed her bag.

"C'mon Sely, it's not all bad, we'll go for a hike in Yellowstone afterwards." He said, trying to cheer her up.

"Hiking sucks… Everything in Wyoming sucks."

"You're just saying that because there's no Wi-Fi in the forest aren't you?"

"No…" she said in a manner that made it very clear that the answer was actually yes."

"Well, I just heard an old college buddy will be joining us, you'll like him. I promise."

"Is it Kate?"

"No, although the three of us used to hang out together."

"Can't Kate come instead? She's cool. Way cooler than mom."

Asking Empie to drop by as well. Could be fun, could also be useful against the empire. Why not? Okay, because that left three teams without a leader for a few days, but Militia could handle B-Bay, and Boston and Philadelphia would probably be okay as well. In addition to that, it was more than a month until the next endbringer attack. They'd be okay.

"I'll ask her, but I can't promise anything, I know she often works weekends."

"Kay."

*** Gadget ***

Mom was getting better, albeit slowly. She could stand and walk with her little walking platform now. And she didn't fall over half the time. She was still a bitch though. And she'd gotten worse now that she'd lost most of her charm. Henry had left her during the entire Hallucca thing, and she hadn't been able to replace him. Served her right.

She looked at me as I entered the room. I could see her face change as the nurse told her that I came to visit.

"What, you here to laugh at me? To tell me how much better life with your father is?" she asked.

"Wasn't going to." I replied.

The room was mostly white, and rather boring. No pictures on the wall or anything. The few we'd had had been destroyed when our house got demolished by Hallucca, and it wasn't like she really had that many before. Mostly pictures of her and her boyfriends, which were immediately removed once they'd broken up. I saw one picture of me on the boardwalk, something dad must've send to her. Or more likely to the people that worked here. It looked clean at least, I was pretty sure dad was taking care of that, he felt a bit guilty about what had happened for some reason.

"Do you want something to drink Sely?" the nurse said, trying to break the tension.

"Can I have some coffee?" I asked her. She nodded, and left the room.

"So you drink coffee now?" mom asked me. Even though part of her face was paralyzed, she looked like she was judging me. It was a strange sight.

"Why do you care?" I asked in return. Sure, I tried coffee every now and then. It'd be a shame not to use dad's coffee machine…

"And your hair is long… You always hated long hair." She continued.

"I kind of like it…. Paige liked it, Emma says it looks good on me." I replied.

"I don't even recognize you anymore." She replied.

"You never recognized me in the first place! You were always just fucking around… literally!" I exclaimed.

"I knew it. I knew you'd forget me, just like he did." She said as she started sobbing. The same old fucking tears I'd seen her use a thousand times before. Something would happen, and whatever it was, it ended up with her being poor little Annabelle who was always the victim. If one of her boyfriends yelled at me, she was upset because he was insulting her by yelling at me. I wasn't going to fall for it, not ever. It was all an act, she never really cried, she just wanted attention.

"Maybe if you ever thought about anyone else, you'd have actual friends who weren't just after your body?" I replied.

"I've got a job Sely, I have a career, you're just a useless brat." She countered. I hoped the nurse lady would return soon…

"Not anymore mom. You're useless now, just like you've always been." I replied. It was true, no-one could disagree with that…

"You…you ungrateful little… I made you… I took care of you… he didn't even… you're mine…"

Mom was still crying for attention, literally, when the woman with my coffee entered the room. She quickly set it on the table and walked towards my mother, trying to calm her down. The doctor said that she didn't have all that much control over her emotions anymore… but she was still a bitch…

I sat down and paid attention to my drink instead. Someone had put milk and sugar in it, just the way I liked it. Maybe dad had told them, he was talking to one of the people here.

"Sely, your mother wants to tell you something." The woman said.

"What? She gonna yell again?"

"No Sely, your mother isn't going to yell at you again. She promised me."

I slowly stood up, walking closer, see what my mom had to say. It'd better be an apology. She just sat there with crying eyes and stuff.

"Sely… I just wanted to say that…" she stopped for a second, sniffling, before she continued. "I wanted to say that I really miss you and I wanted... I wanted to know if you'd come by more?"

"Seriously? First you yell and now… Seriously?" I had absolutely no idea what to say.

"I pour my heart out, and… you're just like your father, you just trod all over my feelings and I…"

I turned around. I just really didn't want to do this anymore. For like one second she'd pretend to be serious about something, and then It was just whine whine whine… I started moving, leaving the room. While I was leaving, mom started yelling again.

"See, you just walk away, leaving me behind! Do you even know what he is!?"She yelled out as I slammed the door behind me, running away.

I eventually found my way to a small ledge looking out over the parking spaces. After a while, someone sat down next to me and swung an arm around me. I looked up and saw dad. He looked angry, but it probably wasn't aimed at me. He was being nice.

"Hey, you all right?" he asked. I nodded.

"Just got a message from Ed. He's waiting for us with Kate at a restaurant. He got us a cabin at the lake with Wi-Fi, and we can go fishing. Is that enough of a bribe to cheer you up again?"

"Ugh… fine dad. I'll cheer up." I replied to him. Wi-Fi and fishing sounded kind of okay.

*** Chevalier ***

"So, fifty bucks she makes him fall in." Kate said.

Edward looked at the canoe for a while. Colin's daughter had somehow convinced him that the best fish were in the middle of the lake, and that they should fish over there. Colin believed her, and now they were floating in the middle of the little lake, Sely getting overexcited whenever one of their fishing rods moved. Suspiciously so.

"That's a sucker's bet if I ever heard of one, you know that's what she's aiming for right?" he commented.

"Probably, fun to watch though." Kate replied, not being annoying for once.

They sat there for a bit, enjoying the nice weather. He looked at Kate again, saw the little girl laughing behind her, as weird as always. The interesting part, however, was the lonely expanse of stars he saw when he looked at Collin's little girl.

She was a parahuman, there was no way around it, at least not that he knew of. Even people who had been granted abilities by trumps didn't show up on his thinker ability.

Colin's suspicions had been correct. He thought about it, starry sky, loneliness, emptiness, it could be a lot of things, so he couldn't deduce what type of ability she had. Still, wasn't this something a father should know about his daughter? He'd want to know, at least.

He knew Colin, the guy would worry his head off if he heard his daughter was a cape. Perhaps, it would be prudent to wait until after Sundays confrontation with the empire 88, it wouldn't do to have Colin with his head somewhere else in the middle of a battle.

He observed Kate again. Would she know? She had a way of figuring out stuff that should be private information, but it wasn't like her to be able to keep such a thing a secret, she'd lord it over everyone who would listen instead, probably. He decided to wait. He'd inform his old friend after the upcoming battle, and leave it at that.

Having made his decision, he stood up, walking towards the mini-fridge they'd dropped in the sand nearby. He'd filled it up with beer and soda beforehand, and this whole situation called for a drink.

"Hey Kate, you see the opener somewhere?"

"Dunno. I think Sely had it when she was opening a bottle of Soda."

He looked back at the boat on the lake, where Collin had gotten his hands on an absolutely massive trout.

"Hey Sely, where did you leave the opener!?" He yelled, holding the unopened bottle of beer in the air so that she could see it.

He saw the girl turn around, massive grin on her face, holding up the opener. "Over here!"

Oh that sneaky little…

"You know you can just open it with another bottle right?" Kate chimed in, knowing perfectly well what she was doing.

"No I can't. It's the principle of the thing, my honour as a knight depends on it!" he said, quickly taking of his shirt and pants, having shifted his underwear from normal to swimming trunks. He knew preparing that beforehand would pay off.

Quickly, he jumped into the water, swimming towards the boat. Colin was busy with his fish, but that little miniature devil was laughing her ass off.

As he reached them, Sely was hiding on the other side of the canoe, bringing it out of balance. He smirked, and Colin finally noticed him.

"Don't you dare Ed, don't you fucking-"

Sadly, his sentence was cut off by the sound of him splashing into the water as Edward finished tipping over the canoe.

He could only laugh for so long before something, or rather, someone, pulled on his leg and pulled him under. The only question was which of the two was responsible.

***

The fire softly crackled, warming up the four of them. Kate had brought marshmallows, which was a nice treat. The only other visible source of light was the stars. It was the kind of night where you could just forget about all your worries and live in the moment. No endbringers, no S-class threats, no youth guard complaints about delinquent wards that kept removing fabric from their already skimpy costumes.

He was quite sure Kate was drunk, at least moreso than he was, with the way she kept going on about weird animals. Apparently, the Boston zoo had recently struck a deal whereby they could get whatever creations of Blasto were caught, as long as they were nonlethal, and Sely had asked if they were better than baby elephants.

Idly, he wondered if the gigaraffes were part of that deal. It wasn't like they had been very dangerous. Also, why would someone look at a giraffe and think: "That should be even bigger."

Colin was just sitting there, finally relaxing, keeping a watchful eye on his daughter. Edward knew Collin wasn't very good at the whole parenting thing. He considered four hours of free time a day, on average, to be plenty. But it was clearly visible that these little weekend trips had been one of his better ideas, mostly because they forced him to not be Armsmaster, and just be Sely's father instead.

He wondered… He'd had something with Hannah once, Miss Militia. But they'd grown apart over the years, eventually putting a stop to it. Had they tried to turn it into something more serious, would they now have something like this? There was the other side of the coin of course. What if one of them had died in the line of duty? What if their kid become a cape, like Sely? Would he be able to live with the fact that he'd drawn someone into the violent world of parahumans?

But looking at the picture of domestic bliss before him, maybe it would've been worth it. He had to admit he was getting he could try adopting? It was probably a bad idea. It was just him, no steady relationship to speak off right now, and his lifestyle wasn't very stable overall. Maybe if he managed to find the right kid? An orphaned cape or something? Hadn't some of Collin's people done that? He'd have to ask them, maybe they had some advice.

"Hey Edward?" Kate suddenly asked him.

"Yeah, what's up?" he replied.

Kate let out a gigantic fart, laughing her ass off at what she thought was an amazing joke. He disagreed, and so, apparent by her facial expression, did Sely. Collin however, was trying very hard to hold in his laughter. He could be such a fucking kid sometimes…

*** Argenta ***

 _May 16, 2010._

Tension filled the room as Emma focussed on her earpiece. Officially, they weren't supposed to do anything here. They were wards, they were supposed to stay out of direct fights with dangerous parahuman criminals, and they knew the Empire was probably going to do something.

Unoficcialy, Argenta was ready to take down Hookwolf again the moment he tried to escape. She just needed an excuse, like "evacuating civilians" or "I didn't know he was there until it was too late."

Even Piggy couldn't object to her catching an escaping murderer, probably.

Beside her in the unmarked van were Triumph and Aegis. Piggy had OK'd the wards being there, as long as it was limited to the more durable members. That meant Triumph's… low level regeneration, Aegis's everything, and her extra-thick armor. He hoped Kaiser would try his little tricks on it, it would only give her more material to control.

She heard Brutus panting over the comms as Battery said something. She'd mastered the art of sitting very still on top of a superdog for long enough that her power could activate. Assault was riding Judas, she knew, and Armsmaster was on a motorcycle. Dauntless provided air cover together with photon mom, and Brandish was sitting in the transport with Militia.

They all knew it wasn't going to happen without interference, and it was just a matter of waiting for the empire to strike. Emma started sweating, the moment was almost there.

Eventually, Dauntless's voice came over the comms. "We've got something incoming, what the hell is tha-"

His voice was suddenly cut off by the sound of an explosion, the fighting had started.


	45. Chapter 7,4

**Chapter 7.4**  
 _May 16, 2010._

I opened my eyes and found myself in the corner of the room, just out of eyesight of the two guards. Modern art paintings lined the walls, and weird sculptures were placed all over the floor, some of them hanging from the ceiling. I grabbed my Sleepers, and aimed at the two guards that had their backs towards me.

There weren't any guests in the room. Some high-society asshole had planned a hoity-toity business party for a local corporation called Medhall, and this place was closed off to the public so that they could set up. Just two bored guards, and a dual-wielding supervillain with sleeping guns.

I took a count, wondering how long it would take. The gun, or rather, device, didn't really put people to sleep the way tranquilizers and stuff like that did. It was more psychological. Wouldn't work in a fight, and if someone really wanted to stay awake he'd just get drowsy, like what had happened to Triumph. But these were bored guards having a boring assignment on their own. After just five seconds, one of them started yawning. Ten seconds later, the first of them, sitting on a chair, had fallen asleep.

"Dave? You sleeping?" the other guy asked in a slow voice, definitely also tired. Slowly, he slumped towards Dave, taking a seat on the little bench his fellow security guard was sleeping on. Five seconds later, he was snoring.

Half a minute in total, and I was out of sight of the cameras. The only problem was that the guy watching the screens would get angry at his colleagues, but we had a plan for that. As long as they couldn't prove it'd been us, we'd be golden.

I saw Ocean pop in in the corner of the room, wielding two of my loopers. I quickly summoned the other two I had access to, dropping my sleepers on the floor to make place for them. The process of creation was always weird. Instead of starting small and growing from that, or popping in all at once, they were created as a wireframe first, and then completed within a tenth of a second, becoming more and more opaque during the process. The only reason I knew what it looked like was because I'd recorded it and watched the movie in slow-motion. Luckily, it came with some sort of spatial awareness that allowed me to place them in the world, usually in my hands. I could summon them anywhere within a few millimetres of my skin, but hands were usually the best option, especially since I somehow knew how to hold my hands so as to make them appear with my finger already on the triggers.

Ocean took aim at two of the cameras, and I targeted the two leftovers. Then, her voice appeared in the little earpiece I was wearing below the helmet.

"On three, your count." She said, crystal clear from across the room.

"One, two," I double-checked my aim one final time. "three." And fired, both chips hitting the mark.

"Got em, you?" I asked.

"Perfect hit. Let's go." She replied.

Next, I summoned two containment foam grenades, pulled the pins, and threw them at the bench the two guards were sleeping on. Quickly, the mechanism inside activated, and within seconds the two guards were covered in foam. A bit after that, I heard mumbling from inside. They'd be allright, you could breathe through the foam, and it'd disappear in a few hours. In the meantime, Rose had grabbed two larger canisters she'd acquired from the PRT, and was busy setting them off in the doorways, blocking off all normal access to the museum hall.

We, of course, could simply teleport out.

Rushing to the next phase, we started removing paintings from the wall, taking both the ones we'd been commissioned to steal, and a few extras that Rose thought she could easily fence. At first, it'd just been the one that Coil had his eyes on. He fancied himself a real bond-style villain, and wanted high art in his lair. Then, he'd given Roses contact information to a friend in Boston, some guy named Accord that happened to be a fan of some stuff by the same painter. While ripping them off the wall, I tried to see what those guys saw in these things. Just lines and shapes mostly, really ordered and stuff, but not very creative. Apparently the artist was famous for being able to do stuff like draw perfect circles by hand, even when you inspected them under a microscope. I wasn't sure about that, but I had to admit his circles were superbly round.

Still shitty paintings, but whatever.

After two minutes, I heard shouting from outside, past the foam. Another three minutes, and the alarm went off. Luckily, we already had everything we needed.

"Grab the first load, I'll teepee you." Rose instructed.

I did as asked, grabbing several paintings. Rose was limit to about one and a half times someone's body weight. Luckily, that meant their original bodyweight, meaning I could carry a far heavier load than she could, even though I weighed less. Then, I looked across town at the building we'd decided on as a halfway spot, and closed my eyes. When I suddenly felt the cold wind blow past me, I opened them again, dumped the paintings on the roof, and turned around, summoning a pair of binoculars, looking at the right floor of the Forsberg gallery, closing my eyes, and dropping the binoculars. When I opened them, I found myself in the place I'd been in seconds before. I grabbed my next load, and tried to make an estimate. Three more trips, and then Rose could grab the remainder and join me on the roof.

*** Dauntless ***

Dauntless flew through the air, ahead of the transport, keeping his eyes open for danger. The Empire was coming, that much was certain.

He turned a corner, when he was confronted by what he could only describe as a Gundam. In fact, it was quite literally a Gundam, or at least pretending to be one.

The robot took three steps forward, and Dauntless yelled a warning into his comms as he looked for the things pilot. Not seeing anything immediately obvious, he decided to act decisively mid-sentence, striking at the robot with his Arclance.

Upon making contact, the robot started glowing, and Dauntless activated his shield, a one-directional forcefield shielding him from harm. His eyes still closed almost automatically because of the light of the explosion. And when he opened them again, he saw… Not as much collateral as he had expected. Most of the street and the buildings to the side were covered in black soot, like after an old-fashioned cartoon explosion. Apparently, Leet had decided to take up PHO's advice, and started building bombs on purpose.

"They're working with Leet" he called out over the comms. "Also, I'm all right." He added to it. He waited for confirmation from his team, and saw that the entire street had already been emptied beforehand. On one hand, he'd been happy there were no onlookers to protect. On the other hand, it was rather strange that there wasn't a single idiot with a cell phone camera and dreams of memehood around.

The communications channel was silent, not a single callout from anyone else, not even Hannah and her ladyboner for proper radio procedure. Nor was there a single bad joke from Assault to keep them all entertained.

Then, he saw Fenja, or perhaps Menja, running around the corner, quickly becoming larger. He wasn't quite sure which one it was, because rather than wielding her trademark weapon, the Amazonian Viking was wielding what looked to be an exact replica of the dagger from Prince of Persia. He could only notice that she wasn't wearing a thematically fitting outfit. Probably too brown-skinned for the Nazi giant. He set his feet on the air, and dashed forwards, striking out with his lance at the woman's throat. She dodged, and struck with her dagger, but even though she was larger and had almost as much reach, this was his game. He could move three-dimensionally. He dodged, lashing out again, this time at the arm holding the dagger. Another miss, and this time a kick hit him from below, launching him upwards.

He quickly recovered, his armour had absorbed most of the damage, ti would probably be just a bruise. The woman was tricky, faster than usual. Was that a feature of the dagger? Was the dagger a new thing, or could he have looked it up beforehand, if he was less of a fuck-up? Knowing the amazon's capabilities would be useful, but he'd ignored Leet because of his general ineptitude. Not that he'd done much research, at least not before what had happened to Sophia.

He tried holding his distance, going for a wide attack that she wouldn't be able to dodge, but the woman's breaker effect stopped him from doing any real damage. He'd need to get in close.

He thought back to her movements, the way she'd dodged, and flew downwards, feinting a strike at her weapon arm. She dodged, just as he was at neck height. Quickly, he turned and struck out, before she could dodge again. This time, he saw a thick line of blood appear. Not much in comparison to his opponents gigantic body, the equivalent of a small kitchen accident, but a hit nonetheless.

Then, he noticed himself flying backwards, up again, and the blood seep inwards, his arm moved back, the spear going past his opponents throat in reverse. When they reached point where he'd feinted at her arm, time resumed again, and he was barely able to dodge her counterattack.

This was going to be annoying.

*** Armsmaster ***

An Electromagnetic pulse. Somehow those assholes had gotten their Nazi hands on a powerful Electromagnetic bomb, destroying their comms, half his gear, and large parts of the cities electrical network. Apparently, Kaiser really needed his dog back. It made sense, in its own fucked up little way. Rune had left, Cricket and Stormtiger were loyal to Hookwolf first and Kaiser second. Purity had probably left, and Night and Fog were in Boston for some reason, probably the same reason Purity had left, leaving Kaiser with a mere handful of capes, at least compared to his usual roster. Not quite enough to fight off Lung if he ever felt like going at it for real.

He checked his suit, back-up systems had activated. He was down to pneumatics only for movement, and most of the special functions of his visor had deactivated. For just a second, he felt happy that Rachel was back at base, the girl needed his social analysis suite more than he did.

He checked his motorcycle. It wasn't running anymore, but it seemed to be largely intact. Then, he stood up, observing the battlefield. The truck had continued driving, having immediately switched to purely mechanical operation after being hit by the EMP. He saw Brandish standing on top of it, and Lady photon flying above it, as it turned a corner, off from the planned path. The path that the Empire had probably known about. One of these days, he'd convince Piggot to allow him to use his lie detector to check for leaks amongst her men. Too bad that would probably be after someone had died, rather than before.

It was then that he saw his enemies approaching. Kaiser was walking in front, wearing his usual armour, but a very peculiar helmet. He recognized it from one of the comics he'd read as a kid, back when his parents had at least pretended to be happy together and give a shit about him.

Did Kaiser even know that Eric Lehnsherr was Jewish? Probably not. Still, wearing the helmet of the Master of Magnetism was a bad sign, especially because of who was standing right next to him.

He'd never expected it, but it actually seemed like Leet had somehow become a formidable threat. He was wearing some sort of leather armour covered in pouches for vials. In one hand, he had a Victorian-era gun, in the other a strange unfolding saw-like object. Seemed like the little shit licked Bloodborne too, although Collin didn't expect the guy to have actually finished the game, at least not on NG+7.

Behind them, almost as an afterthought, was Menja. The amazon was four stories tall and wielding what could only be described as a double-ended chainsaw-spear.

Parts of his more basic UI flickered back online, the shielded systems without connection to the outside. Strength was at 84% normal capacity, mobility at 37%. The grappling hook was disabled, but his Halberd's plasma injector was still working. Kaiser, however, didn't know that.

Waiting for his backup, he decided to try taunting his enemies.

"Hey Leet, I thought your thing was shooting Nazis, not sucking up to them."

Leet looked semi-uncomfortable, and scratched his head, before suddenly taking a more determined pose.

"Don't you know Armsmaster? The only thing more powerful than video games, is friendship." He replied. The idiot probably thought that it sounded cool.

"So you and Kaiser have finally found true love?"

To that, both of them reacted. Kaiser lifted his hand forward, and a few lines on the helmet began to glow.

Armsmaster felt the ground beneath him fall away, and noticed he was now floating in the air.

Kaiser did something, and lifted himself up as well. He started speaking, holding a villainous monologue. "I have to admit Armsmaster, This whole tinker thing can be very… convenient. I can understand why your protectorate types try to recruit them all the time. Of course, introducing a specialized EMP into the mix to turn things around is just karma."

Armsmaster noticed movement in the corner of his eyes, and smiled beneath his helmet.

"You know Kaiser, I'm pretty sure karma is an Indian thing."

"So is the Swastika, doesn't mean we can't appropriate the concept." He replied.

"Speaking about Karma, you do understand that you're not the only one bringing in reinforcements right?" Armsmaster said, the sentence punctuated by a controlled explosion, and the sound of a cannonball blowing Menja of her feet.

*** Gallant ***

Cricket wasn't a psychopath. Gallant was certain of that. The emotions of a psychopath were muted, dull colours flowing through their body. Cricket, however, was loving it. She was throwing a weird glaive –like weapon, throwing them and having them bounce around the room.

He was aware she was mostly a distraction, keeping the PRT troopers at base, as well as the wards that were there, holed up behind cover. The problem was, they couldn't actually do all that much about it. Her reflexes made her almost impossible to hit, and they had to hide behind cover to evade her strikes. A few of the troopers had tried shooting foam at her, but she either dodged the launchers, cut the hoses with her weapons, or hit the grenades in mid-air.

"C'mon cowards, how about you try fighting back!" she yelled.

As she threw another Glaive, Gallant pushed himself closer to the overturned desk he was hiding behind.

"Hey Johnson?" he whispered to the trooper right next to him.

"What is it Gal? any good ideas?"

"I think so. She keeps catching her glaives after the final bounce. How about instead of foaming her, we foam her weaponry?"

"Good idea, now you keep your head down and let us handle this. No need for you kids to get hurt."

He was being nice, worried about them, he could see that. But that didn't mean he was happy about being protected by others. After all, protecting others was exactly what he'd signed up for.

*** Velocity ***

The operation had gone dark. Something had happened, and he had no idea what. Why did he have to be the one staying back at base for this.

Quickly, far faster than anyone else, Velocity went through the screens available to him. Power outages, lack of cell phone data, he got the picture. Someone had unleashed an electromagnetic pulse around the prison transport. That probably meant that the attack was underway.

He was interrupted by the ringing of the phone.

"Velocity here, Protectorate ENE" he replied.

"This is Linda Mac-Lawson from the Forsberg gallery. We're under attack by parahumans."

"Okay, do you know who is attacking, and has anyone gotten hurt?"

"We don't know, they've locked off the hallways with what seems to be containment foam, but our cameras aren't showing anything."

"Okay ma'am, we'll send a squad as soon as we can, just stay away from them and do not engage."

"Look sir, these paintings are worth millions of dollars, the gallery is responsible for half the cities' tourism. You better send more than a squad or-"

"Ma'am, we're currently dealing with a full-blown fight and half our comms are down, I don't give a fuck about your paintings when people are potentially dying. We'll send a squad once we have the time!"

He saw another screen light up red, and threw away the phone, changing into his breaker state to get there faster.

The PRT headquarters was under attack now, and he was here at the Rig, stuck behind comms that didn't work.

Then, he heard a voice in his earpiece.

"Velocity, we've got Stormtiger incoming." One of the troopers called out. He ran to the observation of deck, arriving within seconds, to see Stormtiger floating there. He had some sort of tinker-tech sword, with air rushing around the edge, instead of his trademark claws. Below him, several thugs were swimming in the water, having fallen down when one of the troopers had shut down the forcefield road out to the rig.

No-one had ever accused the Nazis of Brockton Bay of being overly intelligent.

Stormtiger looked at him, and swung his blade, a long arc of air flying outwards from it, towards him. He dodged, running up a small ramp to a different level, and saw the wind-blade tear into the metal of the rig. This was going to be rather annoying wasn't it? He clicked his earpiece, activating it. "Stay in the back, and get me a grenade launcher." He commanded. They weren't technically supposed to follow his orders, but they probably knew better than to question a parahuman with a plan.

It didn't make sense, Stormtiger attacking the rig. He wasn't here to keep them busy, they were with a skeleton crew, and protocol dictated that there should be someone there to watch their prisoners.

Hookwolf had, however, just left, so he wasn't there for that prisoner either. No, there was something else going on. Combine that with the weapon Stormtiger had on him, the EMP downtown, and the fact that Uber was still being held in the rig, and he could only reach one conclusion. Leet had teamed up with the Empire 88, and Stormtiger was here to set Uber free using Leet's tech.

"Hey kitty, how about you try hitting next time!" He shouted, taunting the Nazi cape.

Another slash, easily dodged. Although the attacks were wide, they weren't very fast, easy enough to dodge.

Quickly, he ran past a hallway out of Stormtigers reach, where a PRT trooper stood to hand him his launcher. He hoped it his plan would work, because He sure as hell had no reliable way to reach the flying cape from here.

If only the asshole hadn't learned how to use his powers to float around, this would've been a whole lot easier. Still, the principle behind the man's movement was simple, heavy updrafts below him. That meant that, with some aim and a little luck, he should be able to hit him from below with containment foam.

The real problem would be that he had to drop his weapon whenever he was dodging, but that was where plan B came in. He could do this, he was, after all, a member of the Protectorate.

*** Battery ***

"Another one, on our 10!" Jessica yelled out. Quickly, Lady Photon looked in the direction she'd indicated, and fired another laser at the shadow-clone. Whoever had had the bright idea of giving Crusader more clones had been very, very annoying. Every time one of his translucent ghosts found them, a completely black copy got created, mimicking the original's movements somehow. It probably had something to do with the weird gear the man was wearing. Not his normal stuff.

They'd managed to fight them off so far, with lady photon and Miss Militia sniping most of them at range, but it wasn't a very stable way to perform a transport. At least they were almost out of the city, although they were heading in the wrong direction. They'd probably have to turn around somewhere on the interstate, but that came later, when they were out of reach of the Empire.

They'd lost track of Armsmaster somewhere in the chaos, and Dauntless wasn't anywhere around either. This entire thing was getting crazy, and she could only hope they were all right.

"Watchout, civvy!" Assault Suddenly yelled out, pointing forwards. The Transport tried to turn too fast, and started slipping out of control when Jessica spotted the civilian, someone in a big cloak standing in the middle of the street. The transport crashed into him, having been unable to stop in time. With a sickening crack, she heard the man's bones break.

4.3 seconds later, he was completely fine, and took out a rocket launcher. She saw Lady Photon putting up a shield in front of the man, and when the explosive hit the shield, it broke apart in a massive fireball. Less than five seconds later, Alabaster was perfectly fine and firing another rocket.

That couldn't be everything, could it? Of course not. Brutus started barking and turned around, and she saw what seemed to be a souped up street-racing car turn the corner. On top of it was Krieg, probably manipulating friction to hold himself in place. He had a ridiculously large hammer with him that she recognized from the old Mario arcade game.

Just when she thought that that would be it, the hood of the car opened up, showing some strange tinkertech weaponry hidden inside. She looked to the sides, and more Crusader clones had started making their way there. Both normal and shadowy clones.

She nudged Brutus with her legs, and pointed at the car with Krieg on top of it. "Around, Evade." She commanded, and while Brutus rushed forward, dodging left and right, she started charging up.

*** Aegis ***

Triumph was still talking to their driver, deciding what to do. Argenta was annoyed, itching for a fight. Carlos himself just didn't want to stay in one place like a sitting duck. Their comms didn't work anymore, nor did the light inside the truck, so they were sitting on top of instead.

"Can't we just go? Hookwolf is going to escape this way." Argenta said.

"Yeah, but we have no idea where anyone is, or if we're cleared to go in. Just leave it to the boss for once." He replied.

"Boss is an idiot…" the rebellious teenager said.

"Well, yeah, I agree with you on that one. But he's still the boss, so we have to at least pretend we're listening."

"You know he's just going to do what the PRT guy says right?" Argenta replied.

"Well, yeah, but he probably also wants to help his buddies."

At that, Argenta stopped arguing and started moping around, arcing electrify through her gear and her immediate surroundings. He suddenly had an idea.

"Hey Argenta, you can sense the stuff you're zapping and control it right? You think you can repair the radio?"

"Don't know… worth a try?" she answered.

Aegis jumped off the top of the van, floating down to the front where Triumph and the driver were talking. "Hey guys, can we have the radio? We want to try something."

The PRT guy, a thirty-something guy with a pretty impressive cop moustache, threw the PRT radio box at them. "It's fried anyway, go ahead and give it a try, whatever you're thinking off."

He caught it, and flew back towards Argenta. "Got it here, let's give this a try shall we?"

Argenta nodded, and send one of her cords towards him, electricity arcing off of one end onto the communication device.

"Its simpler than our earpieces, not as much precise work… I think I can fix this, at least a little bit." Argenta said enthusiastically. "Hold on a second… I think I can feel the waves, its… weird. Going to take me a while to figure out how to connect it to the speaker, would've been easier if I'd checked it beforehand, I don't really know what I'm doing."

He waited for half a minute while Triumph and the PRT guy were still discussing something, when Argenta started talking again. "don't think I can fix the speaker, but I can hear stuff from the PRT office. They're reporting a whole lot of Crusader clones, with no sigh of the original. Something about shadowclones, it's vague and I'm not getting more than some chatter."

"Well, tracking down Crusader sounds like a mission. Let's tell the boss!"


	46. Chapter 7,5

**Chapter 7.5**  
The giantess fell backwards, into one of the office buildings. The sound of crumbling concrete was deafening, and dauntless could only hope that the people working there had evacuated. Their fight had been rather noisy and extended, so he presumed they would have long since exited the building.

He judged the range, cross-referencing it against what had happened in the rest of the fight. He was supposed to be about on the edge of the effect.

He chose to dodge backwards a bit, ensuring the plan would work, and he saw the building before him return in time, the valkyrie returning to an upright position as well. He readied his arclance, waiting for the moment she'd be released from the effect.

As his opponent returned to the normal flow of time, he launched his attack again, striking out against the woman's legs. That was the weakness of moving back through time, you could just remember where she'd been, and strike there. Hopefully, she wouldn't be able to use the effect twice in a row.

She fell again, and used the dagger. Again, she slowly returned to her upright position, before suddenly getting smashed back into the building he'd smashed her into before again. The office getting crushed twice in less than ten seconds.

This had to be the weirdest fight he'd ever been in. He had a strategy now though. He'd just have to hit her again at such a moment that rewinding would put her in the middle of the last rewind.

He totally had this, it wasn't like his enemy was a brute that was ridiculously durable even when she wasn't time-travelling through most of the damage. He could only hope that the others had an easier fight. He hadn't heard anything from them since the booby-trapped robot had activated its EMP.

"I've got to admit, you've gotten much better since the last time we fought," his enemy said. Fenja then, not Menja. He'd never come up against Menja before.

"I'm quite sure it's public knowledge that that's my power," he replied.

Fenja stood up, eyeing her tinkertech blade, making sure it hadn't been damaged. "That's not what I meant," she said.

"Well, I don't really care what a Nazi has to say," he replied. What was she talking about if it wasn't his powers?

***Gallant ***

Another glaive fell down on the ground, weighted down by the containment foam. He could see that Cricket was getting frustrated, having lost most of her new weapons. The problem though, was that the fight had been joined by several E88 members, taking pot-shots at the windows of the PRT compound. In any other situation, it would be easy for the PRT troopers to take them down, but most on-duty troopers were either spread out through the city, or pinned down by Cricket in the lobby.

Their plan of foaming down Crickets weapons was working, but she seemed to have a rather large amount of them, not entirely bothered by not being able to collect them.

People were getting hurt though, and they were quite simply not beating her fast enough. Not every PRT employee had military training, and quite a few were panicking. Villains did not usually attack the PRT directly, it was the kind of behaviour that tended to attract too much attention. Was Kaiser really in such a tight spot that he needed to take such risks?

Risking it, he took his head out of cover for a second to see more than just Crickets emotions. The damn nazi didn't even look tired, but what interested him was what he saw behind her, outside the building. Most people wouldn't have noticed it, but he recognized Vista's ability when he saw it.

One by one, he saw the attacking gangbangers turn from cocky, to scared. Evidently, the rest of the wards had teamed up with some PRT troopers and managed to circle around. They were out of range for his empathy, he could just barely see the Empire goons standing outside, but the effect was very evident. If they could keep Cricket occupied here until they were done, they'd have her surrounded. Perhaps they'd be able to take her into custody.

*** Miss Militia ***

The fight wasn't going very well. Crusader had somehow managed to keep up with the transport, and had been harassing them for quite a while. Alabaster's surprise attack had taken away all of their mobility, and they were being pelted with bullets from a set of mini-guns built into a car. Hannah scanned through her memories, trying to figure out what was going on. Alabaster's rocket-launcher looked strange, and the explosion seemed to have blown him backwards quite a bit, bringing him out of their range. Some sort of rocket-jumping device? Designed for kinetic energy rather than destruction? That combined with Crusader's dark twins, made it very clear what was happening. Uber had joined up with the Empire, and he'd brought out some of his old gear, or made new things that fit together with the Nazi power-sets.

That, was bad. The only thing that stopped Leet from being a major threat was that he seemed to be in it for the thrill, rather than the money or the ideology. Now that the Empire had a tinker however, things seemed to be changing.

Did that explain Kaiser's attack? Did he think that, with Leet's help, he could just make a push for control of the city? The one advantage the protectorate had held against them was a better support structure, with better gear available to them. Now that Kaiser had a tinker, especially one as versatile as Leet, he would be able to negate that. That meant this all-out attack wasn't just a plan to break Hookwolf free and keep him out of the birdcage, it was a plan to take out the Protectorate. To show them their place, so to speak.

If that was the case. If Kaiser was getting serious, then Hannah would have to get serious too.

She looked around, surveying the situation before making her decision. Assault and Judas were trying to chase down Alabaster, Assault using his power to redirect the kinetic energy from Alabaster's launcher. A lucky counter to a very annoying opponent. Lady Photon was standing next to her, with Brandish, and was shielding both the armoured transport and the three of them.

Brandish looked helpless, unable to move away from their cover, and unable to attack people at range.

Battery and Brutus had gone for the car by circling around, but from the noise, they'd gotten swamped by Crusader clones. Hannah could only hope that they'd be alright. First, she'd need to take down Krieg and the armed car, which now that she thought about it was probably being driven by Victor.

Having decided upon a plan of action, she took her weapon, and changed it into a rocket launcher. This was exactly the sort of situation where lethal force was the right option, even if the local sympathizers would attempt to make it into a PR nightmare.

She signalled Lady Photon, who made a small hole in her shield, allowing her to fire. The heat-seeking missile was launched forward, having locked onto the engine of their enemies transport. For just a second, Hannah thought it would work. Then, Krieg jumped forward, using his ability to slow down the projectile, and got in a perfect hit with his cartoonish hammer, slamming the rocket backwards towards them. Silly as the SS costume might have looked in combination with the large yellow mallet, it was a very dangerous combination.

Acting almost out of reflex, Lady Photon created a secondary shield, straining herself to the maximum. The projectile hit the new shield, and exploded, destroying it and cracking the original barrier they were hiding behind.

"Militia, please don't do that again," Brandish said.

"What, do you have any better ideas?" Hannah replied, slightly annoyed at the commentary from the woman that wasn't contributing anything to the fight. He knew it was irrational to be angry for that, but then again, Hannah knew she wasn't as perfect as her reputation made people think she was.

"Not really" Brandish replied. "We're basically fucked unless we get reinforcements, unless you figure out a way to shoot Krieg through his brute power."

Things were looking bleak, Hannah thought as she sighed. Perhaps an anti-material rifle would help? It usually did, but then again, so did high explosives.

*** Chevalier ***

Chevalier walked forward, and looked at his opponents. Kaiser, a neo-Nazi gang leader that generated metal, and Leet, a third-rate tinker whose creations kept exploding.

A Magneto helmet on the leader of the Empire though, someone had to have a strange sense of humour there. Nonetheless, it seemed to be rather problematic, as he was pretty sure Colin's armour did not contain a jetpack, at least not yet. He wasn't quite sure why not, if he'd been a tinker himself, it'd have been one of the first things he'd built.

He glanced over at the giantess that had been thrown to the ground, she seemed to be dazed, but not dead, which was good, as he'd used a very large and very heavy cannonball.

He also noticed that Kaiser had finally noticed him, and had started monologue-ing.

"So, Armsmaster, did you really think having one of your buddies help you out would work? Don't you understand? With this new power, I can disable him as easily as I disabled you," he shouted, probably followed by something about failing at art school.

Kaiser raised his hand towards him in a dramatic gesture, and something on his tinkertech helmet seemed to activate. Chevalier wondered for a second, how would this work? Was it just that overpowered a piece of equipment? Or did it somehow change the way Kaiser's power worked? Hijack his targeting system to create this effect? He couldn't help but notice that the man hadn't used his normal abilities yet, meaning the theory that the helmet replaced his power somehow was likely to be correct.

For an instance, he felt his equipment start to slowly lift itself. At which point he decided to shift properties around, trying to figure out what properties the effect attached to. Was it magnetic energy, or some more exotic effect? Within a second, he felt himself drop down again, now immune to the ability.

"Sorry pal, this stuff is mostly decorative plastic, blame the PR department," he quipped back at Kaiser. It wasn't true, not exactly, but it could have been, given Glenn's general obliviousness to proper combat procedures.

"Menja, take care of him," Kaiser said, tersely.

"Don't think so bud," he replied, shifting his cannonblade, greatly increasing its size and striking at the armoured menace.

Kaiser evaded, using his newfound powers to lift himself up into the air, hovering above the ground. At the same time, Edward saw Collin dropping down, having been released from the effect. Good, that meant that Kaiser needed to keep some attention on his targets.

"Armsmaster, you take the other two, I'll take care of Herr Kaiser," he said.

Armsmaster nodded, before activating some sort of pneumatic system in his armour, and dashing forwards towards Leet and the fallen amazon.

Now, to chase Kaiser away from this fight. He ran forward, his armour far lighter than it had any right to be, and kept swatting his blade against Kaiser, keeping him occupied with dodging. A few well-placed high-velocity shots, some quick sword-work and some well-placed taunts, and he'd either have Kaiser downed, or at least too far out of range to affect Armsmaster.

*** Gadget ***

I had to admit, teleportation was quite a neat way to transport yourself great distances, especially when its range was based upon line of sight. I just had to stand there, look in the distance, and blink, and Rose would transport me great distances every time I closed my eyes.

Right now, that meant I was just outside of Boston, waiting for her to catch up with me. Sadly, she could only affect one person at a time, so here I was, carrying all the stuff we had buyers lined up for. Actually, it was buyer, singular. Something was happening in Brockton Bay involving the Empire and the Protectorate, and we'd thought it safer to make our delivery here first, and to get Coil his package at a later date.

Some guy named Accord was apparently a fan of some really, really bad artwork involving very straight lines and very perfect circles.

No explosions, no people, not even landscapes, just some shapes on canvas. Whatever, as long as he paid us well, I had no problem in removing really bad art from museums.

I checked my phone to figure out how long I'd been waiting. Ten minutes now, so Rose could pop in at any moment.

Idly wondering about what was happening I send a message to Emma, asking her if she was okay, and if she was involved in what was happening in B-Bay. She probably was, or at least she would pretend she was. Emma really liked being a ward, but she especially liked being a ward that didn't obey the rules, choosing instead to be a "loose cannon", if her own words were to be believed.

She wasn't very good at that, having limited her behaviour to fighting villains when her boss would get angry about her fighting villains. Also she kept annoying the youth guard, but from what I'd gathered on the internet, no-one actually cared about that. So sure, from her perspective, she was a loose cannon. But from her perspective tucking your shoelaces into your shoes instead of tying them could be categorized as "being a loose cannon", so yeah. A real loose cannon would've robbed a modern art gallery and teleported to Boston to sell the loot to a super-villain instead, and then used that as a trick to arrest the super-villain, keeping the art and the money to themselves.

Not that I was going to do that, I had no reason to suddenly trick super-villains who weren't being assholes to me, and neither did I have any reason to keep the art. It would probably get a lot more difficult to sell stolen goods if people knew I'd try to arrest them during the deal.

Anyway, Accord's power was to be really really smart, so it wasn't like he'd actually hurt people with that like someone like Horn would. Worst case scenario, he fought someone by being really good at martial arts or something, and Boston had to have plenty of superheroes who could deal with that. Like Mouse Protector or someone like that.

Out of nowhere, Rose popped into being in front of me, holding a pair of binoculars.

"Sorry, couldn't remember exactly where I'd dropped you. You ready for the last part of the journey?" she asked.

"Yeah, let's go make bank!" I replied, quickly taking off my helmet, which was probably going to run out any minute now, and creating a new one.

*** Armsmaster ***

Good old dependable Ed, chasing of Kaiser just when it became necessary. Now, he only had Menja and Leet to deal with.

Easier said than done. Menja alone was problematic at the best of times, and right now she had advanced weaponry, while his own armour was largely non-functional.

Then there was Leet, who was only consistent in his inconsistency. Given the theme of his gear, the super-villain would probably fight aggressively, dodge with unnatural speed, and turn into a werewolf, alien, or god, at some point in the fight. Of course, his own plasma injector still worked, allowing him to easily burn through his enemy if he took some sort of beastly form. Knowing Leet, he'd keep the original weaknesses as well.

Heh, plasma injector. He chuckled at the joke, and Leet looked at him curiously.

"Something funny? You're still outnumbered, and it's not like your gear is working right now," Leet said.

"Meh, someone like you wouldn't get it anyway." Colin replied.

"What, you think you're hot shit or something? We both know my tech is better than yours."

"Yeah, when it works. Are you sure your specialty isn't being an explosives tinker?"

Before Leet could react, Menja interrupted their conversation with hear dual chain-saw spear. Armsmaster managed to jump back, dodging the attack, but the weapon ripped apart the road he'd been standing on, pelting him with shrapnel. Armsmaster steeled himself, getting ready for the two on one melee fight against a giant and a dextrous little twat.

"Hey, we were talking!" Leet shouted, but Menja ignored it, continuing her attack pattern. Armsmaster danced back, narrowly evading every hit. Menja's tremendous strength made it near impossible to block it, let alone the fact that the chainsaws would probably rip apart his halberd within a few hits. Normally, such weaponry wouldn't be efficient, but Leet's tech cheated. Fucking Tinkers.

Slowly but surely, Armsmaster was driven back by the onslaught of attacks. His lack of mobility was a rather large problem here. Normally, he'd use his grappling hook to move out of the way, circle around, and take down Leet first, but right now, he could only dodge away from the onslaught, Menja not giving him a single moment to breathe.

Eventually, he spotted a gap in her pattern. The way she twirled her staff around, a slight fumbling of the fingers, she was still unfamiliar with the weapon. Armsmaster repositioned himself, moving slightly to the side, dodging strike after strike, his armour taking care of the shrapnel. Then, the moment Menja reached the part in her pole-twirling where she needed to turn the stick around in her fingers, he kicked back with his foot, hitting the car he'd spotted there earlier. Menja, thinking she'd driven him into a corner, hadn't expected him to use that same corner to launch himself forwards, past her attacks. He slashed out twice, first, to strike the weapon out of her hands, then, even closer, at her legs. This time activating his plasma injector, an incredible heat appearing around his blade.

The second strike was interrupted by a loud bang, and a stinging pain in his shoulder. Before he could react, Leet appeared through a white mist, and sliced at him with the saw-blade. He felt, more than heard, the terrible noise as the blade tore apart his chest armour. He managed to jump backwards, but pop-ups in his UI showed a tremendous amount of damage to the surviving systems.

Before he could fully sum up the damage, he was suddenly flung to the side, skidding through the street, his Halberd flying out of his hands.

Oh, right, Menja was still around. The woman had dropped her weapon, but was still able to deal out a beating with her punches. That made for three hits in a row. Not a good record, especially since he hadn't gotten his own in yet. He stood up, and held out his arm, waiting for absolutely nothing to happen. The teleportation system in his Halberd was quite obviously fried.

To do things the old-fashioned way then. He spotted Menja running towards him again, her weapon back in her hands. Leet was right behind her, waiting for the opening. It was a deadly combination, with Leet able to counterattack every time he tried to pierce Menja's defences. He'd have to dodge Menja's attacks, outrun her incredible speed, and somehow attack Leet directly instead, all with most of his arsenal destroyed.

His hand went towards one of the pouches at his belt, one he hadn't used in quite a while. There, he found his back-up weapon. A small knife, made as a model for his plasma-injector. He hid it in his left hand, holding the blade against his arm to make it nearly invisible to his opponents. In his peripheral vision, he noted blood coming from the left shoulder, the bullet had penetrated, although his armour and arm still worked. Good, that would stop them from expecting a hidden weapon.

He pretended to run towards his halberd, knowing perfectly well he wouldn't be able to reach it before Menja reached him. The thing was, they wouldn't know that he knew that.

About halfway there, Menja reached him, striking out with her weapon in an upward arc, aiming to put him down. He reacted, not by dodging, but by jumping, holding on to the weapon. Exactly as he'd expected, Menja kept up her attack pattern, taking a moment before recognizing that he hadn't dodged the attack. Holding on to the weapon, he released it at the top of its arc, flying over Menja's head, right at Leet.

Except Leet wasn't there. He'd somehow managed to see the deception coming, and changed his course just when Menja attacked. Instead of landing on top of Leet, Armsmaster hit the pavement, and only narrowly managed to dodge another of Leet's slashes aimed at his torso by rolling past the attack.

Still, it had brought him in melee range of the tinker. He lashed out with his right fist, pretending to go for unarmed combat. Every time he was about to hit, Leet used his short-ranged teleport again, dodging a few meters to the left or right. That, however, meant that Menja couldn't strike at Armsmaster, since Leet could appear right in the path of her weapons. Eventually, Armsmaster thought, he'd win this. Leet had the type of physique that fit with the basement-dwelling nerd, while he actually worked out himself. If this came to physical condition, he'd win.

He'd lost count of the amount of times Leet managed to dodge at the last second, and lost himself in the flow of battle. He'd underestimated this asshole. Hell, everyone had underestimated him. When he actually cared, Leet was capable of being very dangerous indeed.

Eventually however, Leet came to the same conclusion he had. "Wide, low sweep, I'll dodge it!" he yelled.

Menja did just that, holding her weapon at chest-height, or at least chest-height for a normal person, she swung it in a wide arc, the two tinkers right in the middle of its path. Leet activated his short-range teleportation device again, shifting right through Menja's gigantic weapon. Armsmaster tried rolling under it, but Menja brought it down at the last moment, and hit him with the staff of the weapon.

For the umpteenth time that day, Armsmaster felt himself skidding along the road. This time however, in a strange twist of fate, he stopped right next to his Halberd. Standing up, he started feeling the damage. He'd have bruises all over his body if he survived this, and he thought he'd broken a rib or two. This wasn't going very well at all.

He grabbed onto his Halberd, getting ready for another round. He couldn't lose here, he suddenly realized. If he died…

No, no thinking about that. That was the very reason he'd decided not to go for a family once, when he was younger. He couldn't let thoughts like that distract him.

At long last, Menja decided to speak.

"The oh so great Armsmaster, brought down by the people he'd dismissed. I'm guessing you didn't expect this huh?" she asked.

Armsmaster grimaced. He was in a bad shape right now, and his enemies, even Menja, knew it. Slwoly but surely, Menja approached again, swinging around her chainsaw weapon.

Then, out of nowhere, a gargantuan metal hulk crashed into Menja. He blinked, trying to figure out if his eyes were deceiving him. Menja had quickly recovered from the impact, but was now trying to dodge something coming out of the mysterious attacker.

Containment foam, he realized, and he looked at the metal hulk. For some reason, Dragon had shown up to give him a helping hand.

"Her breaker state gives her the capabilities of a high-level brute." He groaned, trusting Dragon's sensors to detect the sound.

It worked, because after that statement, Dragon's suit added missiles to her assault, using the explosions to drive Menja into her foam-sprayers. Twice, Menja tried to lash out with her weaponry, but Dragon's fast-response suit simply had too high a range to hit.

Within half a minute, the breaker/brute had been taken down by Dragon's attack. He looked at Leet, who seemed to be… less than surprised. Strange, very strange.

"You know Armsmaster, I'm kind of insulted, what with you inviting Mouse Protector and Chevalier along but ignoring me," Dragon said.

He sighed, thinking about how to save himself from this.

"Well, you know, they're mostly here so I could have an excuse to take two days off?" he stammered.

"Well. If you say so," she said thought the loudspeakers on the suit. "Now, you know what's interesting? Just when an EMP went off in the middle of the city, I got an e-mail through a very suspicious channel."

The suit turned, directing its head at Leet, who was trying to make himself look very small.

"Would you happen to have something to do with that, mister Leet?" Dragon asked him.

"I have to say, I didn't expect Chevalier," Leet replied. "Anyway, let's negotiate."

"Negotiate?" Armsamster asked. "I don't think you're in any position to negotiate here."

"On the contrary." Leet replied. "I'm in the perfect position to negotiate. Didn't you see the helmet I managed to make Kaiser wear?"

"Helmet? Kaiser? Am I missing something?" Dragon asked.

"He was doing a Magneto cosplay." Armsmaster answered.

"Magneto you say? But isn't he a… Ohh, I get it. You are, in fact, in a position to negotiate here." Dragon replied.

"Wait, how does one follow from the other here?" Armsmaster asked.

"That's very simple," Leet replied. "I've created or repurposed gear for every single member of the Empire Eighty-Eight. I've also installed booby-traps in every single one of them."

Armsmaster nodded. That explained quite some things, for example, why an avid gamer would suddenly work together with Nazis instead of shooting them.

"So, what do you want?" he asked.

"Three things," Leet answered. "First of all, I want you to release Uber, doesn't matter how you do it, I just want my friend back. Second, I need either you or Dragon to make us a new Snitch, the last one went missing, and we both know that that creates a big problem for me. As for the third point-"

*** Velocity ***

Velocity was exhausted. Sure, he could dodge most of Stormtigers attacks, but the wind-shield stopped all of his counterattacks. The battle was a tie, and if neither of them got reinforcements, he was quite sure he'd tire before Stormtiger did.

Not entirely sure, but it wasn't something he wanted to bet on.

He grabbed the foam-launcher again, aiming just below his enemy, and firing. Timing it so the grenade exploded in mid-air this time. Again, the aero-kinetic deflected the flying foam, making it safe for him to slash out with his sword again.

Velocity dropped his weapon, and ran for it with his power, grabbing a different launcher from his new position.

Then, just as he took aim for another shot, Stormtigers weapon started smoking, and before the cape could react, it started electrocuting him, dropping how down into the water. Acting quickly, Velocity shot a few grenade at the place where he'd seen the cape land, hoping to disable him and make him float in one move. The foam did that, probably.

He laughed, realizing that it had been Leets tech after all. Had to be, it exploded for no adequately explained reason.

*** Mouse Protector ***

"So kids, as you can see, the key to being a hero as amazing as me, is finding your opponent after his own gear has electrocuted him." Kate quipped, motioning towards the body of Crusader, lying on the ground.

Emma, Pretty fly for a Hispanic guy, and shouty didn't seem to be very impressed, but she could work with that. She just needed higher quality puns.

"So, figuring out your opponent has already defeated himself, quite shocking, isn't it?"

Again, no reaction. Kids these days just had no sense of taste.

"Looks like he went on a, crusade, against his own crimes."

Nothing, again. Had she lost her touch? No, it's the kids that were wrong for not liking her jokes. Perhaps she should stop tagging along with random wards she met during a mission. If kids these days couldn't handle her genius, it'd be wasted on them.

She wondered, had this happened all over the place? The strange tinkertech backfiring on its users?

*** Dauntless ***

Dauntless stood over the fallen body of his opponent, trying his best not to pay too much attention to the wardrobe malfunction one of his attacks had caused. He was still, after all, a hero.

It was strange, he'd defeated her, and then, a minute later, her fallen weapon suddenly started electrocuting itself. Strange, and probably something worth looking into.

*** Miss Militia ***

Hannah grimaced. They were in a bad shape, but for some reason, they'd won, their enemies having suddenly been disabled out of nowhere.

"You two stay here, I'll take them in," Brandish stated, walking forwards towards the fallen empire capes.

"Any bullet wounds?" Lady Photon asked, and Hannah looked at her. She'd somehow managed to use her shields to stop herself from bleeding out. "Don't worry, Amy can fix this," the woman stated, seeing how worried Hannah looked.

"Nothing beyond surface damage" Hannah replied. Photon had taken most of the damage in the onslaught. At least, of the three of them that were here. She hadn't seen Assault of Battery for a while. "I'll go look for Battery, see if she's alright."

She stood up from behind their cover, and made her way towards the area where she'd last seen Battery go. After a bit, she heard barking. Walking on in her tired state, she eventually found Jessica lying on the ground, wounded but alive, with Brutus standing guard over her, having somehow removed himself from Hellhound's meatsuit.

"It's okay boy, the fight is over."

*** PHO ***

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 **Topic: Important Announcement**

 **In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay**

 **Armsmaster** (Original Poster) (Verified Cape) (Protectorate ENE)

Posted on May 16, 2010:

I, Armsmaster, leader of the Protectorate ENE, hereby solemnly swear that the villain known as Leet is the best tinker in Brockton Bay, and is much more skilled, capable and versatile than all the other tinkers combined.

 **(Showing Page 1 of 1)**

 **► Dragon** (Verified Cape) (Protectorate) (The Guild)

Replied on May 16, 2010:

I, Dragon, member of both the Guild and the Protectorate, hereby solemnly swear that I agree with Armsmaster's above statement that Leet is the best Tinker in the city of Brockton Bay, and would like to add that there are several fields in which he is much more effective than I am.

 **End of Page. 1**


	47. Chapter 7,6

**Chapter 7.6**  
"Well, that was interesting," Collin said, gesturing towards the leaving tinker.

"I have to agree," Dragon said.

Collin looked back at Dragon. The sleek curves of her engines, the perfume of jet fuel and containment foam that surrounded her, her accent, just barely audible beneath the voice modulation, she was just so amazing.

And, he remembered, he'd made a promise to Sely. A promise to ask her out, the next time he saw her. And this time, he couldn't tell himself that it count because the connection was only digital. This was as in person as it was likely to get.

Problem was, he had done absolutely no preparatory work at all.

Searching back through his memories, he eventually came up with a plan.

"Dragon, could you watch Menja for a moment? I have something I need to do."

"Sure, but, are you certain it can't wait?"

"Not really," he replied.

He ran back, around one of the corners they'd turned in the transport convoy. Then, he saw it. The flower shop he remembered being there. He walked closer, and noticed that it was closed, the owner probably having fled from the fight.

For three entire seconds, he thought about his course of action, before using his halberd to smash in the window, and grabbing one of the bouquets that had been placed in the window. Quickly, he grabbed a few notes from his wallet, and wrote a small note before laying them on the counter.

 _Sorry for the broken window, romantic emergency situation. – Armsmaster._

He ran back, spotting Dragon's suit still standing over the now much smaller amazon. Hiding the bouquet behind him, he approached her, and started thinking about the right way to ask her.

"Dragon?" he said, asking for her attention.

She acknowledged him, and turned around to face him with the mechanical head, her flamethrowers softly shining from a ray of light that had pierced the clouds.

"I, have something to ask you," he said, still holding the bouquet behind him.

"Yes?" she asked, curiosity in her voice.

Collin brought out the flowers, holding them in front of him. "Dragon, I think you're the most amazing woman I've ever met. Would you do me the honour of going out with me?"

For just a second, Dragon's suit stopped moving. Then, it came to life again.

"Armsmaster… " she said. "I thought you'd never ask."

Quickly, he went through the statement, looking for its meaning. Then, from deep in her containment foam prison, the amazon started shouting. "That's a yes you idiot, just hug her already."

For once, Armsmaster chose to follow a Nazi's advice.

Several hours later, after everyone had been properly arrested, and Hookwolf was safely on his way to the birdcage, soon to be followed by some of his compatriots, if they managed to find a non-corrupt court, Armsmaster found himself back on the rig. Someone (Stormtiger) had gouged through large swathes of the exterior, but it was mostly cosmetic damage. They'd released Uber, doing so before Piggot could do something stupid and break their deal, and he finally spotted Chevalier walking towards them over the force field.

"Hey Armsy, if anyone asks, that car park was trashed when I got there," he shouted jovially. Collin could guess at what had happened, and could predict Piggot's incoming accusations of irresponsibility.

"Don't worry, we'll just claim Glory Girl was bored, usually works," Assault quipped.

"Sounds like I'm going to have to meet this girl, she one of the wards?" Mouse Protector asked.

"Nah, New Wave, she's a big-time celebrity here." Assault replied. He still looked a bit annoyed, having been one of the few people that hadn't caught his Nazi. Somehow, Alabaster had managed to get away without his tech betraying him. The only other escapee had been Cricket, who'd run out of weapons before they turned on her, and had somehow managed to get out of a total surround. She'd probably heard it coming somehow with her echolocation.

As Chevalier finally reached him, he came close, motioning for them to move somewhere private. Collin led him to a small alcove, out of hearing range for the others.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"Not wrong, as such, no. Listen, I didn't want to tell you before because we needed your mind to be on the fight, but it's about your daughter."

Collin was quiet for a second, trying to comprehend what Edward was saying.

"So you're saying…"

"She's a parahuman, yes. No idea what kind, it's difficult to tell at the best of times, but she's quite clearly got powers."

"I see," Collin replied, becoming silent. It seemed like he'd have to have a talk with his daughter about supernatural abilities, both his and hers.

"Now, before we go back to the rest, and don't tell Kate… I asked Dragon out on a date. It's just… do you have any idea on what to actually do together? My father always told me to take girls to a fancy restaurant, but, you know…" he nudged at the large metal suit standing in front of the rig, talking to Kid Win about something.

*** Gadget ***

On the roof of Accord's building, a woman in a yellow evening gown was waiting for us. She was wearing an intricate mask inlaid with gemstones, and was holding the door open. Rose nodded to her, and we went inside, carrying our merchandise. Another of Accord's men, a man this time, was waiting for us, leading us further into the building towards an elevator door. I wasn't sure how, but the elevator reached our floor exactly when we reached it. It had some impeccable timing.

As we entered, the door closed behind us, and slowly, almost unnoticeably, the elevator started moving. Which was when our escort started talking.

"You're on time, early even. That's good, the boss doesn't like people who are late," he said.

"I trust you have the money ready?" Rose, or Ocean now, asked him.

"If you have the paintings, you will be paid. Non-sequential, unmarked bills, just like you asked for."

"Good, good. Gadget, let me do the talking, Then, watch and learn."

"Aye-aye sir" I joked, holding my hand up in a mock salute.

Accord's man winced, the humourless idiot.

Then, the doors opened again, I hadn't even noticed the slowing down.

The man led us out into the hallway, eventually waiting in front of a door. He took out his watch, and stood almost perfectly still. I could just barely see his chest moving, in tune with the rhythm of his breathing.

Then, at exactly 17:30, at least according to my UI, he knocked on the door. Someone answered, and he opened the door, saying a few words to the person in the other room, before gesturing to us, telling us to go inside.

Accord's office was, in one word, amazing. The desk was made out of hardwood, the lines in the wood of the different planks perfectly matching up with one another. The same was true for every single object in the room. The walls, the paintings, even the clock in the corner was perfect, it didn't make a single sound as it slowly spun from second to second.

"Ocean and… Gadget, was it?" the least interesting thing in the room said.

Rose had warned me, but, I hadn't realized just how small of a man he was. Sure, he was just a tiny bit taller than I was, but I was small for a girl, and would probably still add a few inches. Probably, hopefully.

"That's us," Rose answered.

"You have what I ordered?"

"We do."

"I have to admit, I was afraid that current events in Brockton Bay would interfere with our dealings."

"Well, we left the city the moment we noticed something was off. I am not quite sure what happened, but we evaded it"

Accord's face, hidden behind the wood and silver mask he was wearing, changed expressions. I wasn't quite sure what he was thinking, only that the movements of his mask meant something.

"It seems that a large part of the white supremacist contingent has been cleared out. I have to admit, I don't approve of his methods, but if I read this right, which I do, then this Elite fellow is quite effective."

"It's Leet," I interjected. "It's a game thing."

"I see," Accord replied, while Ocean shot an angry look at me.

Oh, yeah, right. I wasn't supposed to talk here.

"This… action, of Leet's. is it public knowledge?" Ocean asked.

"In part. Coil send me some rather amusing footage, but one could puzzle it together without that," Accord replied. "Alas, we have dallied for long enough, may I see them?" Accord asked, motioning towards his nearly empty desk.

I walked forward, unrolling the first of his paintings, quickly smoothing out the edges and adjusting them so they didn't hit his pencil-holder.

At the sight of the painting, Accord let out a strange moan that sounded very much like something that required an 18+ rating.

"Ahh, magnificent, isn't it? Brushwork, elevated through endless training to the level of absolute perfection. No human could do better. That is, no normal human. I believe there are quite a few parahumans who could do better," he said. Strange, how he was suddenly musing about things like we weren't even there. Did he simply like the painting that much?

Yeah, he probably did.

He had a point though, about parahumans being better paintings. Maybe it wasn't exactly what he was aiming at, but I'd noticed it myself. My power let me visualize things, and put them on paper to create blueprints. Apparently, the ability to do that, as well as the steady hand to put my thoughts on paper, had been a small but useful part of the package. It didn't give me knowledge about composition, or colour theory, or what paints to use where, but with a pencil I could easily draw anything I could imagine. As long as I could imagine it first.

"Give the others to Othello. He'll give you your reward." Accord said.

Ocean nodded to him, and he returned the gesture. Then, we left the office, where the man that had led us here accepted our burden, and gave Ocean a briefcase. She opened it, checking to see a rather large amount of bills, neatly packed and tightly bundled.

"Well, it seems like everything's been taken care of. Pleasure doing business with you," she said.

"Same here, we have your number if anything else comes up." the man replied, very businessy. I wondered how many times he'd done this before.

We went into the elevator again, quickly reaching the top floor, and went onto the roof.

"I'll send you up ahead, meet you at my place?" Rose asked.

"Sure, dad's probably still working, said today would be busy. I'm bound to believe him, given what was happening when we left,' I replied.

"Well, you know what to do" she said, as I looked in the direction of Brockton Bay. I waited until I heard Rose sit down on the ground, and blinked. In one blink, I was on the outskirts of the city. On the second, I stood just besides the highway. On the third, I found myself standing on a small ledge, overlooking the water.

I looked onwards, and closed my eyes a fourth time. This time however, when I opened my eyes, I was in exactly the same spot as when I closed them. Weird. I blinked again, and again, it didn't work.

Had something interrupted Rose? I'd seen the way she'd eyed that Othello guy. It was weird, she wasn't usually this unprofessional.

I took out Accord's pen, a remarkable piece of engineering. It wasn't tinker-tech, but it was much, much more interesting than any normal object I'd blueprinted. Idly, I twirled it around; looking at the way its weight was perfectly distributed to keep the pen in perfect balance, wondering when Rose would show up.


	48. Chapter 8,1

Chapter 8.1

Rose was taking her sweet time, catching up to me. It had to have been, like, an hour or something like that already.

Plus, she refused to actually pick up her phone.

Suddenly, a horrible thought came up. What if she was still seeing everything from my eyes, but somehow my blinking didn't work anymore? I knew that her power only worked when I blinked. At that moment she could choose to either do nothing, teleport me, return to her body, or move towards someone who's eyes I could see. Before meeting me, she'd been using that to _case the joint_ , as she called it. I wasn't quite sure why weed was involved, but whatever.

Slowly, I tried blinking a couple more times, giving her a chance to either teleport me or make her way out. Nothing happened though. Why wouldn't she do anything? Quickly, I grabbed a piece of paper, and used Accord's pen to write a message.

 _If you can read this, teleport me one meter forwards_

Then, I blinked.

Nothing. So it was an actual problem, not me looking in the wrong directions.

For just a sec, I wondered about calling Accord. Rose had told me he disliked speaking to people he hadn't vetted before, but could it really be that bad? Maybe I should go through my options first.

I could, of course, go home the normal way. Either get on a bus, or hotwire a car or something. Sure, my last car ride hadn't gone great, but I'd gotten a lot of life experience in the meantime, and also played a few racing games, so it'd probably go a lot better this time.

But that wouldn't stop Rose's problem. No, I needed to move towards Boston instead. Maybe I could do something to help Rose when I saw the problem.

Okay, so I'd need to get to Boston. First step, find a car. I was in the middle of nowhere right now, but I was pretty sure there was a highway nearby, which meant cars.

*** Gadget ***

About five minutes, and twelve grappling hooks, later, I'd found my highway. Which was really a misnomer, because it was actually placed in a hollow between two foresty hills, and not high at all. The other option, of course, was that the high in highway was related to drugs. I thought that unlikely, but it would explain the average person's driving habits.

Now, I just needed to find a car I could steal. Preferably without walking too far.

With that, I got lucky. There was a small gas station not too far away, just a mile or so. Which, now that I thought about it, was actually quite far when walking. That was the problem with cars, you just forgot how fucking far everything was.

There were two things I could do. Or actually, three things. I could walk, which wasn't really an option. I could use my remaining grappling hooks to launch myself off of trees to increase my travelling speed. Or, I could use my grappling hooks to attach myself to a car, which sounded like an amazing idea. Sure, it also sounded like something that could kill me, but that was just a small detail. After all, space-travel was also dangerous, and astronauts were hailed as national heroes. Or at least, they were in the past. There weren't really any astronauts these days. Which was ridiculous, because tinker-tech probably meant astronauting was a lot simpler. Even normal powers helped. For example, instead of using boosters and shit, NASA could just ask Alexandria to throw rocket into space.

Having decided on my, completely safe, course of action, I waited for a slow-moving truck to drive by, and launched my hookshot. It latched on with a clunk, and pulled me forward like crazy, almost removing my arm from my torso.

I'd need to figure out some way to distribute that load, maybe use my braking cable instead? That would take out some of the strain… but I also needed to get closer to the car afterwards, so it'd probably mean I needed to make a new one just for getting a free ride.

The device managed to reel me in before burning out, and before I dropped to the ground and got shredded into minced meat. Now, I was just barely holding on to the back of a truck that, hopefully, didn't know I was there. Problem was, the car behind it had just started honking like a maniac, since there was a fourteen year old supervillain with an awesome helmet hanging on to the truck in front of it.

I grabbed another hookshot, and used it to get to the roof. Maybe once I was up there, I would be more or less invisible. For just a second, I debated using the sleeper on the car following us, but that would probably lead to some horrifying accident, which Rose would classify as ' _Drawing unnecessary attention._ ' Also, it would be unethical, even though the constant honking was really, really annoying.

The trucker however, was happy to completely ignore the crazy driver behind him.

Sadly, the truck didn't stop anywhere where I could steal a car. Luckily, it did go to Boston.

On another flipside, a lot of people were watching the teenager standing on top of a truck.

Eventually, it looked like the truck was going to stop, so I jumped off, using one of my recently regenerated hookshots to dismount it. The ride had taken a while, and the wind had been cold, but for the rest, I was okay.

I grabbed my phone and tried calling Rose again. Maybe she'd figured out what the problem was in the meantime. Although, if she had, why hadn't she called me.

I waited for her to pick up, one, two…

On precisely the third tone, someone picked up the line. It wasn't Rose.

"Well well well, if it isn't our little thief." Accord's voice came out over the line. Weird. Why was Accord answering Rose's phone? Had she fallen unconscious, was that why he was answering for her?

"Yup, it's me." I answered.

"You stole something." He said.

"Yeah, that's why you hired us ya dummy." I replied. Of course we stole something. How else would we have gotten our hands on all those paintings? Seriously, high-class supervillains just weren't as smart as they used to be.

"No young lady, you stole something that belonged to me," he said calmly, the anger just barely hidden behind a silky voice. He sounded like someone desperately trying to control his anger.

Also… he was probably talking about the pen, not the paintings. That… that did make a lot more sense.

"Hey, I thought it was complementary. You know, like the towels in a hotel."

"I… what… Young lady those are NOT Complementary!" Accord replied. Now shouting over the phone.

"Anyway, you mind giving me Ocean for a sec? I need to talk to her" I said. This was going nowhere, Accord didn't even know anything about hotels.

Also, why was he so angry about a fucking pen. If everyone got that angry whenever they lost something so petty, well, a lot of people would be really angry at me.

Wasn't my fault anyway, and it was just a fucking pen. If he didn't want me to take it he shouldn't have put it there.

And it was just a fucking pen anyway…

"I don't think you quite understand the situation you are in," Accord replied, suddenly calm again.

"And I don't think you understand how much an asshole you are. Give Ocean her phone back." I said.

"You know what? Let's play a game. If you can guess just how completely out of your depth you are, I'll show you where your colleague is," Accord replied.

"Well, if you can guess how much of a fucking asshole you are-" I replied, before being cut off by an invisible hand punching my phone out of my hand.

The f? I looked around, trying to figure out what had happened, but there wasn't anyone around.

Then, something hit me over the head, cracking the glass of my helmet. Before I could react to it, something invisible kicked me in the chest, and half a second later I felt a needle in my arm.

Well fuck… putting someone to sleep against their will was my shtick.

*** Armsmaster ***

"Nothing. One second, she's calling someone in Boston. The next, her phone disappears, as if she destroyed it," Dragon said, worry apparent in her tone.

"Can't you track the person who called her?" Chevalier suggested.

"That's one of the first things I did, but it was a burner, only four calls made on it, all of them to Sely." Dragon replied

"And you're sure you don't know who could've called her?" Armsmaster asked Argenta.

"No, I mean, I don't really know any of her friends outside of school, since, you know, work." the girl replied.

Colin tried to hide his anger. Emma had known. She'd known since the very beginning and she hadn't told him. He was Sely's father, he had a right to know she was a cape. A Tinker even.

The very Tinker that the PRT guy in Westlake had speculated about.

At the same time, he couldn't really blame the girl. After all, he'd asked Emma to keep his own identity a secret as well.

Sure, it had been with the best of intentions, to try and give Sely a life without all the cape bullshit, but it had still backfired.

And now she was somewhere in Boston. How she'd gotten there, what she'd been doing there, he had absolutely no idea.

Except for the part where there'd been a robbery at the Forsberg gallery, apparently using tinkertech. Sure, some of it was just stolen containment foam, but there was the strange effect on the security cameras, as well as the fact that two professional security guards had decided to fall asleep at the exact same moment, without any known chemicals being present.

Combine that with whatever had happened Arcadia with the fake supervillain attack, and it became clear that his daughter was very, very versatile.

Tinker/Stranger, just what they needed. And now she was missing.

"Hmm, that's interesting," Dragon said.

"What is it?" he asked immediately.

"It seems like someone accessed the same records I did, regarding the location of Sely's phone."

"Who?" he replied.

"I'm not sure, it's done through several proxies that eventually link back to the local police department."

"Mouse Protector, do you know who could be responsible for this?"

"In Boston?" Kate asked. "Not the Teeth, they're not very subtle. Also not Night and Fog, so… probably Accord."

"Accord…" Chevalier said. "That, combined with the art theft, would go together."

"What, she stole something from him, but then Accord backstabbed her?" Emma asked.

"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know, but I think it's more probable than not that it's Accord. Which is bad, really bad," MP answered.

"Well, we need to get over there then," Chevalier said.

"Already on my way," Dragon replied over the computer screen, obviously having rerouted her fast response unit.

"In the meantime," Armsmaster responded. "I'm going to call in an old favour."

At that, he took out his phone and called someone he hadn't fought in quite a while.

"Hello?" the modulated voice on the other end of the line said.

"Hello Blasto. It's me. I'm calling in my favour."

*** Gadget ***

My hands were bound behind my back in what seemed to be a costum-made set of manacles. Costum-made because they weren't too big. I also had a gag in my mouth, a rope binding my legs to the chair, headphones with white noise on my ears, and a blindfold in front of my eyes

The only one of those that was a problem was the blindfold, mostly because I didn't know if anyone was standing guard.

I didn't want to break out only to see someone was standing just besides me to stop that exact thing from happening.

Thus, I waited, trying to figure out if there was anyone around. Also, I hoped that if someone was around, they wouldn't have figured out I was awake.

They probably would though, as I'd panicked for a few seconds after waking up.

Not anymore though. I wasn't the same little girl that had gotten kidnapped by both Horn and Hallucca in the span of two days.

My Gadget-Space was nearly filled up again, just missing the hookshot I'd used to dismount the truck.

I wondered where Rose was, although, if I really thought about it… She was probably in the same shape I was in. Or worse... If Accord caught her after figuring out I'd stolen his pen.

Fuck.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

I'd…

I'd gotten my partner killed. Probably. Maybe not though. I mean, Accord hadn't killed me yet.

But the internet said Tinkers were valuable. Like, really valuable. Movers, fun as they were, weren't that valuable.

So yeah…

Fuck.

…

…

Suddenly, the white noise in my ears stopped, and I heard someone breathing in front of me, just a few meters.

"You know, I almost feel bad for you," a woman said. The woman in the yellow mask, I think. Not sure, hard to tell, she didn't speak much.

"I mean, you're what, fourteen? Tricked into a life of crime by someone using you for your powers, then fucked over by your mental hang-ups," she said.

Wait, tricked into what now? What was she on about? Rose and I had been partners. She'd bring the expertise, I'd bring the tech.

Although… Tinkers were valuable according to the internet. If I were Rose, and I were evil… impressing a teenager to get some sweet loot…

She said she liked me, but did this mean she only liked me for my brain?

"Well, I'm guessing the Yangban wouldn't put you on field-duty, so you'll probably get a nice, well-equipped lab. Maybe that'll dull the pain of how utterly stupid you've been. I mean, seriously, what were you thinking, stealing from Accord of all people."

I hated her, this swanky classy dressed-up bullshit bitch. Pretending she gave a shit, even though she'd bound me up here.

Still, she'd made a mistake. I know knew she was the only person here, and I knew she wasn't going to kill me.

Sure, she was going to sell me to the Chinese, which was probably worse, but that meant I was worth a lot of money. Which meant she wasn't going to kill me the second she suspected I was up to something.

I blueprinted the cuffs around my arms, making them disappear.

"Wait, what's? No, you're a Tinker, that doesn't make any sense," the woman said. Had she noticed something?

I chose to act quickly, and absorbed the blindfold at the same time I grabbed the hookshot that fired at the highest velocity. Within half a second, I'd found her location, and aimed the hookshot at her.

Suddenly, the world seemed to get a weird tint, and I felt a strange pressure at the back of my head, where my blueprinted stuff was located. Not wanting to figure out what the woman was doing, I fired.

The forcefield generator at the front of the hook hit her mask, and went straight through, burrowing halfway into her eyeball before activating and lodging itself in there. As the woman clutched her bleeding face, I quickly absorbed all the stuff they'd used to tie me up.

Good quality rope, I noticed, reminded me of the pen.

Then, I ran past her towards the door. Whatever she'd been doing, it obviously required concentration, which was difficult when something was using a forcefield to attach itself to the middle of your eyeball.

I'd find some time to throw up at that thought later.

The woman had locked the door behind herself, which would've been a problem for everyone that didn't have a custom automated lockpicking device with her at all times.

The door opened, and I found myself in a hallway in what seemed to be the middle of the skyscraper I'd been in earlier today. I wasn't sure, but it had the same kind of architecture.

Testing my luck, I threw up a grenade with invisible foam in one direction, and ran towards the other. Then, for good measure, I threw a normal grenade at dress-bitch. I'd met elegantly dressed supervillain ladies before, and Paige was way more awesome than this poser bitch.

The hallway was, remarkably empty. I'd expected some sort of alarm to start, but no-one had noticed my escape yet. Or maybe Accord was too anal to have an alarm in his secret supervillain base.

That said, I needed to confirm what happened to Rose, and preferably also take down Accord. He's, well, he'd probably killed Rose, and he'd seen my face. That said, or thought as it was, I grabbed my helmet, including the earpieces I used to cancel out the noise of my alarm.

It had been a lot louder than I first expected, so it'd be a good distraction to drop somewhere.

Also, I could probably leverage my power tools somehow. And my grenades, and my…

I looked down, noticing I wasn't wearing my harness anymore. Just the shirt I was wearing under it. That meant I wouldn't be able to properly activate my mass-cancellation orbs. Which sucked.

Although… I could probably rewire them quite easily, which would have an… interesting effect on their environment, at least if I threw them at something intricate like a computer, or one of those ridiculously complicated mechanisms made by Accord. Those probably depended on them having a specific weight that didn't vary every second.

Suddenly, I saw someone leaving an office. A dude, twenty-something, wearing a suit. No mask, so probably not a cape. Good, I could use that.

I took out two hookshots, and aimed them at his torso.

"Hands where I can see them," I said calmly, totally cool, not panicking at all.

He pretended to hold his hands up in surprise, before quickly trying to sidestep my aim and probably take me down or something.

When I shot, he reacted fast enough to try and deflect my hooks with his arms, like he had some sort of martial arts training. However, he hadn't expected them to be tinkertech. Instead of being deflected, the forcefield generators on the tip of the hooks attached themselves to his arm instead, messing up the flesh inside somewhat.

I followed it up by dropping the hookshots from my hands and grabbing the battery-powered chainsaw and a hunting knife I'd found in the cabin last weekend.

"Where's Ocean?" I asked him.

He looked at the tools in my hands, and the blood coming from his hands. Quite obviously deciding that risking a fight with the girl that could summon weapons from nowhere was a bad idea, he decided to make excuses instead.

"I don't know who that is."

Partially because I believed him, partially because I didn't know how to interrogate people, I dropped the chainsaw and chucked a foam grenade at him, leaving him bound to the ground.

This time however, someone had noticed what had happened, as some sort of alarm started blaring.

Well, two could play that game. I grabbed a noise generator, chucking it on the ground near the foamed up asshole in the suit.

Maybe his ears would break, maybe they wouldn't. I didn't give a shit, because maybe he shouldn't have worked for an asshole like Accord.

Although, I'd worked for Accord for a bit. But that wasn't for a salary, and mostly just a one-time thing. That was different for some reason that I hadn't quite decided on yet.

I ran onwards, trying to figure out if I could find some sort of elevator shaft or something, and from there make my way to Accord's office.

Although… it was probably a better idea to just leave. But I needed to figure out what had happened to Rose, and to make sure Accord didn't just try to catch me again.

I also needed to take down that invisible asshole somehow.

One turn around the corner later, I noticed that most of the doors were suddenly locked. Probably the lower-tier dudes having been instructed to do that in case of alarms.

Another corner later, I saw the elevator. Plus a fancy little window on top that told me it was coming towards this floor. Probably carrying parahuman reinforcement.

Which meant I was facing a difficult conundrum. Did I lock the elevator door with visible containment foam, or with invisible containment foam?

Probably invisible, seeing as they hadn't encountered that before unless Dragon had also made it independently of me. Which was perfectly possible, Dragon seemed like the kind of person to do stuff like that.

Eventually, I decided upon the normal foam. I could keep the invisible stuff for later, when I found Accord. After I decided what to do with Accord.

Next to the elevator, I found a sign signalling a fire exit. Next to it was a fire alarm. I looked upwards, noticing the sprinkler system.

Why not? Maybe it was connected to the emergency lines directly, meaning Accord would have hot firemen to deal with.

I activated the fire alarm, and noticed that the emergency escape was still locked. Interesting, that was a fire hazard. You know, just like tying someone up to sell them to the Chinese. So yeah, Accord probably didn't give a shit and the intruder alert locked all the doors.

Luckily, I had another lockpicker up my magical sleeve.

I closed the door behind me, hearing the elevator's arrival and some cursing behind me, quickly followed by what seemed to be the sound of someone's power, and things breaking.

I had two options now. I could go up, find Accord's office, and deal with him. Or I could go down, see if there was a morgue or something down there, and find Rose. And also, you know, escape.

Which I could also do from up here, if I found a window. There were several buildings in range of my long-range hookshots, at least from what I remembered from earlier today.

I just needed to decide quickly, because it seemed like Accord's cape contingent had escaped the elevator.


	49. Chapter 8,2

**Chapter 8.2**

Upwards, that was the path I chose. Now, if only I could remember on what floor Accord's office had been. Given his… issues, it was probably a special one.

Lets see… If I was a psychopathic maniac that killed people for stealing a pen, where would I put my office? Presuming, of course, that the entire building was his.

The first option of course, was to put it in the exact middle of the building, with everything symmetrically around it. But I'd looked out of his window, and he had been too high up for that. Also, his office hadn't been in the enter of the window.

It also wasn't the top floor, or we wouldn't have taken an elevator there.

So maybe a floor that corresponded to a prime number or something like that? No, there were simply too many of those.

I checked the numbers on the doors. I was currently at number thirty-seven, and there looked to be at least ten floors above me.

Forty-two maybe? That made sense? But Accord was a humourless asshole, so it probably wasn't forty-two.

I heard noises below me, the cape-squad from the elevator, apparently having decided to take the stairs. Well, I could make noise too. And in a small confined space like this, it'd hurt them, hard.

I dropped another speaker, and while my earpieces filtered out most of the sound, I could still hear the noise. Then, I dropped it down the central shaft.

As I dropped it, I saw someone look up through the shaft. A cape, his mask had a strange blue wide shade to it. He spotted me, and the device, and while the noise seemed to annoy him, he still managed to use his power.

Some kind of portal seemed to open in the stairwell, and a strange white gas came out, rising slowly. He seemed to have at least partial control over it, and I saw the others following him back away from the cloud.

Poisonous gas? Probably yeah. That was a problem. I'd need to get out of there, because the gas was rising a lot faster than I could run.

Maybe I could use my hookshots to get higher? Although, that would probably cause one of them with a ranged attack to just shoot me.

I wouldn't be able to use the grenades. Containment foam let gases through, allowing people caught in it to breathe. That meant the poison gas would go straight through too.

Except… my own mixture, the invisible stuff. That was a tad more solid. That made it too dangerous to safely use on people, but if I could block off this passage…

They probably wouldn't even notice until I'd blocked of the passage if I created a distraction during the foam expansion.

So, what could I do to create a visual distraction? I'd already taken down their ears, so that wouldn't work…

Of course, I could just distract them with actual confoam.

I took out my remaining grenades. Three invisible, two confoam. First, I rigged up the invisible ones to spread through the area all at once. Then, I dropped the confoam nades, aiming them at the walls just above the rising white gas. As they exploded, I activated the invisible ones, and ran for it.

Two floors higher, I found the solution to my earlier conundrum.

A door that seemed to have a lot more security on it than the others, including a lock attached to a number pad. I was pretty sure Accord's lair wasn't up to code.

Sadly, that meant I couldn't use a lockpicker to unlock the door. Now that I knew this however, I could use a different plan.

I ran further, to the floor above what I thought was Accord's, and unlocked the door there. Below me, I heard shouting, people yelling about gas and not being able to understand each other through the noise.

I looked down one final time, just when I heard them start yelling about something else.

Way at the bottom of the stairwell, like forty floors down or something like that, something weird had appeared. It looked to be, well, tentacles was the only way I could describe it, and it was slowly making its way upwards.

Yeah, I was pretty sure I knew what would happen if I got close to those things. Not cool.

I made my way through the door, and closed it again behind me. It locked itself automatically, which was useful. Unless they had some way of detecting what doors had been opened. Which, if this was my supervillain lair, I would have installed. So they probably knew where I was.

Now, to find a window that looked out in the same direction as Accord's office.

I ran through the hallways. Again, most of the doors seemed to be locked, and also not see-through, but I spotted a break-room here and there, and those had windows to the outside. From what I recognized of the city outside, I just needed to make one more turn.

It was eerie, the empty hallways, all made up out of hardwood and marble and steel, or at least something that looked like those materials. Small nameplates were placed next to each door, as well as professions. Biologists, economists, mathematicians, psychologists, sociologists, nutrition researchers, I even spotted a few historians. What the hell was Accord planning here? Some sort of weird world-domination plan? I'd thought he was some sort of local businessman/supervillain that used a squad of powered flunkies to take out the competition, but everything on this floor seemed like it was meant for a different purpose. It made me think of old spy movies, or crazy cape-fics on PHO.

Suddenly, I felt something shake, like something large just hit the building. One of Accord's men? Probably not, he wouldn't want his own lair destroyed. Something else then. Not something I did, I was pretty sure of that. Whatever had caused the tentacles maybe? Or was there something else involved.

I turned another corner, and estimated I'd be just above Accord's office now. I looked on the door to my right. It said

Dr H. Reed

Head Pharmacology

So this dude did medicine, he specialized in drugs. The medical kind, not the stuff you'd buy from criminals. Although, he worked for Accord, so if you bought anything from him, you would actually be buying form a criminal.

I grabbed another unlocker, my second to last one. Strangely enough, the new one that had started generating shortly after my escape was already halfway done. I could've sworn that usually took longer.

Pushing it in, the door opened, and I saw an office, complete with computer, swivel chair, and a man hiding underneath his desk. On the walls were awards and diplomas, no personal items to speak of.

I walked closer, and he seemed to shrink even further. Pathetic, a grown man scared of a little girl. Useful though, it meant I wouldn't have to bother with him

More interesting were the notes on his desk, as well as the picture visible on his computer screen.

A picture of Rose, naked, a tube shoved in her mouth, and more medical stuff attached to her lower half. She was chained up, and her eyes… I suddenly stopped feeling even slightly bad about the woman I'd shot downstairs.

"The fuck is wrong with you!" I shouted at the guy, not bothering with voice modulation.

He just whimpered, and I gave him a kick. When he didn't react to my tiny woman-legs, I gave him just a little shooting in the leg. At that, he shouted out in pain.

"What the fuck did you do!" I shouted at him. In the meantime, I quickly blueprinted all the papers on his desk. Maybe it would help with something.

"I don't… please… I just work here... It's Tinker stuff, they're refining the drug," he replied.

"Where? Where is she!" I shouted.

I'd thought she was dead. This? This was worse.

"Please don't-" he began, and I decided to shoot him again, this time in the other leg.

"Where?" I asked, aiming a third hookshot at his face.

"The lab on forty-one. Please, I have a daught-"

The man was silenced by a knife hitting him in the throat, and fell down, gargling on his own blood.

I looked up, and saw another knife floating in the air.

The invisible guy, the one that had taken me down before.

The knife flew towards me, too fast to dodge. Instead, I tried to absorb it almost reflexively.

It worked. Kind of. The knife had penetrated slightly, and I felt blood seep from my chest, just in front of my heart. It hadn't penetrated further though.

Still, if I didn't manage to find a way around this guy, I was completely, totally, fucked.

Sound? No. Drone? No. Looper? No. confoam? Empty.

My mind raced through all the other options. The stuff I'd absorbed on a whim, or for a different purpose. Did I have anything explosive? Something to break the window before the guy could reach me?

I felt a kick in between my ribs, right where the knife had almost killed me, and got an idea.

I waited, having fallen to the floor, acting just panicked enough to make him think he'd won. Then, when I thought he'd be right in front of me, I called up the largest thing in my arsenal. Leet's flying drone.

For half a moment, it flickered into existence. Then, I suddenly saw an outline of someone standing over me, overlapping the drone. Something strange happened, and both the guy and the drone shifted out of existence.

Then, just as I thought I'd gotten lucky again, the building shook again.

I looked around, not seeing where the shaking came from. Well, it'd have to wait until after I'd rescued Rose. If she could still be rescued.

I took out my miniature chainsaw, and tested it on the glass pane overlooking the city. There were scratches on the glass, but it didn't seem to work as well as I'd expected.

Well, I had other tricks up my sleeve. Such as hotwiring batteries. First, I closed the door, hoping that invisible guy would need to open it if he came back. Then, I grabbed every power tool with a battery I had.

A little wire here, another there, and I'd created an electrician's nightmare. I took a glance at the pharmacist, still slowly bleeding out, and decided to pull him with me, hiding behind an overturned desk. Then, I set off the explosion.

Somehow, it worked, breaking the pane of glass. I returned my gaze to the asshole. I didn't really have anything to help him out with, and had no idea how to give first aid. Also, it had been his friend that tried to finish him off.

Leaving him behind, I walked to the now broken window, and looked outside.

Just below me was forty-one, the lab I'd been looking for. I saw that my destruction of the glass, and what seemed to be the instability of the building, had destroyed that window too.

Above me, something completely different was happening. What could only have been Dragon was circling the roof, firing flamethrowers at someone that was shooting back.

That explained the crashes. Also, that meant I needed to get out of here, a hero like Dragon probably wouldn't take kindly to villains like me.

I jumped out, shooting backwards with my hookshot, and neatly flew into the office on the floor below me.

The first thing I noticed was that someone had emptied out the office. The computer had been ripped open, its hard-drive removed, and there were empty folders scattered though the room, in addition to some papers lying on the floor. Whoever had been cleaning this place out had probably left after I exploded the window. I looked at the papers, and saw they were filled with text and graphs. No pictures, so I couldn't figure out what it was about. Still, if they didn't want anyone to see this, it wouldn't hurt to blueprint it right?

I walked to the door. I needed the lab, not some empty office. Although the fact that they'd evacuated, combined with Dragon attacking the building…

Was Accord the type of guy to have a self-destruct button? I mean, he did have his own tower in Boston, plus secret supervillain lab. But self-destructs would be messy, and everything here tended to be very clean and ordered. I hadn't spotted a single cob-web in the building yet.

The hallway itself was not empty. I saw lots of people running around in lab coats and suits, spotting me, and then quickly running the other way. Most of them were holding laptops and papers.

With Dragon attacking, whatever those tentacles had been, and me rampaging through the building, they were quite obviously evacuating somehow. The question was, how? They probably wouldn't be taking the elevator, and I was quite sure the fire exit wasn't going to work either. Some sort of parahuman ability? Did they have a teleporter like Rose? Had they somehow harnessed her power?

I didn't know, and it didn't really matter. I wouldn't be able to take them down anyway. Most of what I had going for me here had been the element of surprise, and the fact that most people expected to lose against a cape. I was quite obviously a cape, what with my helmet and everything, so they just chose to run instead, even if a guy with a gun could easily beat me.

Still, making them more afraid of me could only help, so I decided to take out a third loudspeaker and add some more noise to the mayhem.

I had to admit, I loved being the only person that wasn't able to hear these things, the effect on the surrounding people was just amazing. Just like that, they all scattered around corners and behind doors.

Now, to find their secret medical lab. It was obviously secret, so it wouldn't have a window. Which meant it was probably in the middle of the building, because the building had windows all around it. Unless the lab had fake windows, but that would be cheating.

Sadly, even though I'd expected it and it confirmed my suspicions about the location of the lab. The only door that led into the middle of the building that I found was locked with a number pad, an eye-scanner, and a card-scanner. Probably needed a voice command too.

Well, it was time to get to work, I didn't bring my tools everywhere for nothing.

I grabbed a screwdriver, a mobile soldering tools, some wire that would disappear in a few hours, and started to work. This was almost as fun as what I expected breaking open a bank safe to be. Only, you know, the context around it was really really shitty.

Eventually, the rest of the floor went silent. People stopped running or panicking or yelling, and the only thing I heard was the soft hum of my sound-filter. I wondered how they'd gotten out. After all, I'd been in the hallway for all three minutes, meaning they wouldn't have been able to leave their rooms without me spotting them.

Then, I noticed a voice coming from behind the door. Someone was talking. Two people actually. One of them, I recognized as Accord. The other was a woman. I couldn't quite make out what they were talking about, although I figured out a few words. Something about a drug and powers.

Wait… did that mean this was related to what had happened in Westlake? Were they testing drugs that gave you powers here?

I took out another hookshot, and fired it at my speaker, destroying it. Then, I took of my helmet and earpieces, and held my head to the door.

"-ird generation is complete, and dimensional bleed-off is confirmed, but compatibility with either power source is unconfirmed. I am not leaving this project incomplete!" I heard Accord say.

"We agree," the woman replied. "Door to base Samekh 7."

Then, I heard footsteps, small, light ones. Which in this case it was the man that was leaving, not the woman. Accord was a tiny tiny little asshole.

I kept listening, wondering what the woman was doing. Everything seemed to be perfectly silent, with only a few crashing sounds from far away in the building, both beneath and above me.

Then, the woman spoke again.

"You do know the only remaining step is to reroute that yellow wire through the top of the little array you made, right?" she whispered, just barely loud enough to be heard.

I looked at my work, noticing that I was indeed almost finished if I did that. Probably. I'd been going for a safer path through since I couldn't see all the internals, but it would probably work.

I snipped the wire, and rerouted it, after which the door went open with an audible hiss. The lab had been over-pressurized, probably to keep out external factors such as dust or supervillains.

Inside was what seemed to be a mix between an operating room and a laboratory. I recognized Rose, strapped to the table, completely white. There were a lot of wrappers lying on the ground, and a few empty vials were scattered though the room. A tube came out of Rose's neck, leading into what seemed to be a device made to fill bottles like the ones lying around. They'd been bleeding her dry and storing the blood.

Also in the room was the woman. She was wearing a suit, complete with tie, and had a hat on her head that was typically reserved for fat idiots on the internet. She wasn't wearing a mask, and didn't look like the type of person Accord hired. Given the end of the conversation that I'd overheard, she was the type of person that hired Accord. A super-supervillain or something like that.

"I'm afraid your stupidity killed her," she said. "Also, you should ask your father about his prediction program."

Me? I'd killed her? Bullshit. She was the one standing in front of Rose's corpse, not me.

I took out a hookshot, firing it the instant it materialized.

The woman in the suit sidestepped it effortlessly, and turned her back to me.

"Door me," she said. From her tone and manner, I was quite sure she wasn't talking to me.

Right in front of her, a hole appeared in the air. Behind it, a long corridor, paved with white tiles you'd expect in a bathroom.

That had probably been how everyone had escaped from this floor then…

Before I could react, the woman stepped forward, and the portal closed behind her.

Coming out of my shock, I walked towards Rose's body.

My eyes went for her face, just for a moment. This time, I didn't see a shitty picture. Instead, I saw the real deal, and I was suddenly very happy I wasn't wearing my helmet right now.

After about half a minute, I looked up from the puddle I'd left on the floor. It didn't look like there wasn't anything I could do for her. I grabbed a cloth that someone had left behind, and draped it over her face. If I couldn't close her eyes for her, I could at least do this.

I felt my stomach retch again, but this time, there was nothing left to come out. I took a second to find an empty spot on the floor, and sat down, trying desperately to control myself.

She'd died. Used up for some crazy experiment, bled dry until they couldn't user anymore. They were creating some sort of drug, one that gave people powers. One that was similar to the one that had devastated Westlake.

Did than mean O'Neill was involved here? Or did it go higher? I could imagine someone like O'Neill creating a lab somewhere to further study his product, but all the way over here in Boston? Creating something like this in a matter of months? No, it had to be something bigger. Something involving an organisation that could create portals to different places, such as whatever Samekh 7 was.

Samekh, wasn't that a letter in Hebrew? Like Aleph and Bet? Did that mean there was something interdimensional going on here? Had Accord and the woman in the suit been some sort of alien conquerors?

And what was that about _either power source_? Was there more than one way to gain powers? Something besides trigger events? Something like a drug maybe? But they had to test compatibility of the new drug with the old one, so it'd be a third power source.

Except… there were Trumps, as they were called, that could give people powers too right? Was that something different as well?

And what was that about my father's prediction program? Was dad doing something at work that would be relevant or something? Should I be following the advice of a super-supervillain?

The noise outside, made by Dragon flying around the building, started to recede. Had her opponents left? Evacuated in the same way the lady in the suit and Accord had?

I tried to stand up again, and noticed the pain in my chest. I looked at my shirt, now covered in blood. Strange, I hadn't really felt the knife-wound before. Was that the adrenalin? Probably yes. I looked around, trying to see if I could find something to take care of it before realizing I had absolutely no idea on how to use medical technology. Weird, that. For some reason, biology hadn't been part of the package beyond trying to figure out what my tech would do to flesh and bones.

Thinking about bleeding, would the guy upstairs have made it? What with the knife through the throat and everything? Probably… well, probably not. He was probably dead, just because I chose his office to make my way downstairs. Or because one of Accord's people had decided to silence him. Technically the second reason, but I couldn't help but think it was the first.

I decided to take a few minutes to gather my energy. The bleeding had largely stopped, so it probably wouldn't be a big deal. When I'd rested a bit, I could go outside and hookshot out or something. Accord's people had left the building, so that'd probably work out just fine…

Eventually, I wasn't sure how long it had been, someone entered the room. I looked up, and saw a man wearing a face-shaped mask, slightly wooden in appearance, like a strange amalgamation of tree and flesh. I didn't recognize it. Besides him was what seemed to be the lovechild or a kangaroo and an elephant, with some extra attachments that reminded me of a scorpion. It would've been cute if it didn't look so deadly.

"Hey, you Armsmaster's kid?" the man asked me calmly, as if he already knew the answer and expected it to be yes.

Wait what? 


	50. Chapter 8,3

Chapter 8.3

Why the hell would anyone think I was Armsmaster's daughter? That didn't make any sense.

I mean, sure, every girl dreams about her father being a superhero, but that's with the knowledge that it's not actually true.

In other words, there was no way my father could be Armsmaster, so this guy had the wrong teenage girl.

Except… unlikely as it may be, people still won the lottery. After all, someone had to win it. Same thing here. Given the fact that there had to be an actual daughter of Armsmaster around, could that be me? I'd never seen my dad and Armsmaster in the same room, but then again, I'd never seen my dad and Eidolon in the same room either. That didn't mean my dad was Eidolon.

But, he did live in Brockton Bay. He also worked late quite often. But that was just because he had a desk job at the PRT… a desk job where he'd gotten very ripped. But, if my dad was Armsmaster, Emma would've told me. Also, the guy that rescued me back in Westlake just so happened to be my dad?

Wait… that last one actually made more sense if my dad actually was Armsmaster.

"I see you're bleeding," the man in the mask stated, having decided to stop waiting for me to answer his last question. "You dry Tinkers really don't know how to handle that kind of stuff do you?"

He came closer, grabbing some tools out of his pocket, they looked like needles, some sort of thread, and a small syringe.

"You think you can at least say hello?" he asked.

"Hi…" I answered.

He looked at the table Rose's body was lying on, and then at the puddle on the ground. "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about fasting before an operation. Is this everything?" he asked, pointing at the stab wound.

"Took a kick in the ribs… who are you?"

He pulled up my shirt in a quick, methodical manner. Not the kind of way I expected guys to do that. Then again, this guy was more than twice my age, so it was probably better this way.

He went to town with the needle and thread, after applying what seemed to be a localized anaesthetic. In the meantime, he kept chatting. The strange Kangaroo creature was collecting things from around the lab, mostly paperwork and notes that had been left behind, probably nothing too important.

"I'm Blasto, that's Greek for the budding of cells and stuff like that, so no, I don't do explosions. I used to have a… working relation with your father and a couple of his friends, back in his college days."

"Wait… I don't understand…" I replied.

"It's usually like that just after a battle. Now, stand up, and try to remember what's happened so you can reflect upon it later." He said, holding out a hand.

I wasn't sure what to make of the entire situation, and was way too tired to stand up, so I ignored it

"What do you mean working relation?" I asked. My dad was Armsmaster? He was friends with a villain?

Blasto walked towards Rose's corpse, inspecting the tubes and stuff attached to her, and looked through the laboratory, glancing at a few of the documents his assistant had gathered while speaking.

"The PRT likes to pretend the world is neatly divided into heroes and villains. That you're either good, or bad. They pretend that heroes are entirely good, and villains are entirely evil.

"Which is, as you can see, entirely ridiculous. There's a very big difference between a guy like Accord, who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals, whatever they may be, and someone turning to a life of crime to fund their tinkering. I'm thinking the latter category applies to both of us."

Well, that last part I could agree with. There was absolutely no good way to get uranium on the cheap.

"The thing is, my specialty makes for good PR. Not for me, mind you. No, it provides that to the PRT. One of their heroes beating an expendable creation makes for a good headline with a full-colour picture, in a way that gang violence just doesn't."

"You mean, like, zombies in a video-game? Or Nazis?"

"Yeah, pretty much. People don't have to feel bad for someone the way they do when they see third-degree burns on some kid with a knife.

"So, anyway, back when your dad was hanging out with Myrddin, Chevalier and Mouse Protector, I was just getting myself set up. They kept coming out to stop me, we exchanged some witty banter, and things were about as cordial as they got between hero and villain. It was a good example of the unwritten rules working out for once.

"Eventually, I wanted to test one of my hypothesis against an Endbringer, and I ended up chatting with your father afterwards, exchanging notes on tinkering, pros and cons of joining up with the protectorate, that kind of thing. One thing led to another, we got drunk on the flight back, he beat me in poker somehow, and I had to make a giant cat attack Mouse Protector on her birthday."

"I'm still not entirely sure about this whole Armsmaster being my dad thing." I replied. The anecdotes were interesting, but…

"Because of course he didn't tell you. Because he's an idiot." Blasto replied.

"Hey, that's my dad you're talking about. I think."

"Well, anyway, I had this kind of sort of long distance thing with another Tinker called String Theory. Your dad send me a message about her, warning me not to get involved. I decided to trust him, and two months later the girl had gotten herself an S-class rating and been locked up in the birdcage. I told him I owed him one, and about half an hour ago, he called me to call in the favour. Told me to help out his daughter, a short teenager with long-ish blonde hair with strips of blue, red, purple and black in it, possibly wearing a completely reflective glass helmet."

"That… okay so yeah…" I said. He was still looking through some of the paperwork, figuring out what they'd done.

"So, anyway, I'm pretty sure Dragon is upstairs, and from what I've been reading here, she'll be very interested in what's happening here. Long story short, even if you're a wet Tinker, don't work on people. That kind of stuff gets a lot of people really suspicious, and for good reason."

"Is that what they were doing?" I asked him. "They were talking about some sort of drug, the same thing that got loose in my hometown. Something about generations and dimensional bleed-off."

He looked at me, thinking about the new information. "So they were working on someone elses work, which meant that, because Accord was in charge, its something replicable. That would most certainly explain where he got the funding. The CIA is very interested in getting its own powered operatives.

"Anyway, as I was saying, don't Tinker with people unless you've got someone watching your every move. On the other hand, you should make sure they know you're capable of shit like that if you are, but not actually willing to do it."

"Why? Won't that make people way too scared of you?" I asked him.

"Yes and no. The thing is, I could easily make stuff like diseases, and the PRT knows it. Thing is, they know I know what they'll do if I actually create a disease, and I know that they know that I know how to create a counter if someone else decides to release a tinkertech plague."

"So, if Bonesaw were to do something…" I started to figure out what he was talking about.

"Then the Protectorate knows who to call. In the meantime, they know not to go looking for my lab."

"As long as you're not going too far," I completed for him.

"Exactly," he replied enthusiastically. "You think you ready to stand up?"

I checked my legs, finding them a bit more stable now, after talking with Blasto for a while. He held out his hand again, and I grabbed onto it, letting him pull me to my feet.

"So… why are you telling me this?" I asked him.

"Lots of reasons. First of all, you were tired and I needed to take your mind off of things for a bit. Second, this type of stuff is something that every cape needs to know, on both sides of the fence. Third, I kinda like your style, and my sister moved to England last year, meaning my niece can't drop by anymore."

"So…"

"So we never spoke about any of this, and we're walking to the roof where Dragon can pick you up."

I looked at Rose again. Blasto had removed the tubes from her body expertly, and it looked like she was just sleeping, although a tad pale, and also naked.

I walked up to her, grabbing her hand. Whatever had happened, it had been partially my fault. She'd trusted me, and I'd repaid her by getting her killed.

I felt Blasto's hand on my shoulder, nice and warm in comparison to Rose's.

"The PRT will come and pick up her body. Accord's not the type to self-destruct his base, too messy. They'll clean her up, try and figure out if she has any living family, and hold a burial. They'll make sure she's all cleaned up and everything. That's the image you want in your memory. Not, well, this." He said.

"Okay…" I sniffled.

"She's been in the game for a few years now. She knew the risks, knew what it meant to deal with people like Accord. Sure, this sucks, but it's not like it came out of nowhere.

"Try to learn from what happened today, but don't let it pull you down. Doing that won't help anyone."

"Fine..."

Gently, he pushed on my back, leading me out of the lab. The hallway was largely as I'd left it, although I spotted a rather difficult to describe thing just around the corner.

"Love the invisible foam by the way, haven't seen that one before," Blasto said. "Gave mister Mustard a good surprise… Although, I should probably figure out what his actual name was."

"Was?"

"Dude played around with lethal gasses, not the type of opponent you go easy on," he replied tersely. "Proportional response is a thing. In this case, it was largely justified. It'd be a different thing if he'd actually tried to figure out a way to fight nonlethally."

"oh…" I replied.

Blasto led us to a different door than the one I'd seen from the fire escape. The door itself was completely destroyed, and it looked like it had been hidden before that.

"Private entrance for Accord. It's how I found this place." Blasto clarified. Behind the door was a set of stairs, with some of the fancy wall coverings scuffed by Blasto's creations.

"I found some paperwork…" I said.

"Give it to Dragon, if its anything to do with that lab downstairs, she'll probably send it to me under the moniker of anonymous consultant," he replied.

The rest of the journey was… relatively silent. The entire building had been evacuated, leaving an eerie situation behind, and both Blasto and I were out of things to say.

Armsmaster my dad… It would've been too much of a coincidence if he wasn't, given how Blasto said he had described me. Still though, why hadn't Emma told me?

Then again, Emma apparently hadn't told him about me either, at least until today. Or had dad known all along? No, that didn't make any sense.

Just before reaching the roof, Blasto asked me if I had any way to hide my face. I materialized my helmet, placing it on my head while he looked at me in surprise.

"That's a pretty neat trick girl. Some sort of teleporter inside it?" he asked.

"Not telling," I replied.

When we reached the roof, he stood behind, keeping to the shadows, and pushed me forwards.

Two news helicopters were circling the roof at a distance, but they were nothing compared to the mechanical marvel before me.

Dragon, in all her glory.

I'd thought Leet's drone had been cool, but this? This was amazing.

"Hello Sely," a semi-synthesized voice spoke form a speaker. It reminded me of a voice that I'd heard before, one that my father had been in love with.

"You knew…" I replied.

"Your father and I disagreed, but it was his decision to make, and he thought it was in your best interest not to know," she replied.

"Did he ask you out yet?" I asked the mechanical lady.

"As a matter of fact, yes he did! He even got me flowers," she replied happily.

Well, at least that problem was dealt with.

I looked behind me, and saw that Blasto had suddenly disappeared.

"Where'd Blasto go?" I asked.

"Who? I have absolutely no idea who you're talking about, I came here on my own." Dragon replied. "Anyway, your dad will be here in about half an hour, so you should probably get dressed before that happens."

I looked down at my clothes, cold in the open air above Boston. Accord's people had stripped me almost bare, and my shirt was still covered in blood where Blasto hadn't cut it away to get access to the wound.

"Yeah… probably a good idea."


	51. Chapter 8,4

**Chapter 8.4**  
 _May 17, 2010. Just past midnight._

Armsmaster has a kid. Armsmaster, of all people, has a kid.

That had been the thought keeping Piggot awake about twice a week. Somehow, Collin Wallis had managed to breed.

And now, the result was sitting in her office, after having fought off Accord of all people.

Could it really have been too much to ask for a day of rest after arresting almost the entire Empire at once? At least Mouse Protector had managed to keep the wards out of trouble.

Oh well, she'd gotten confirmation that Hookwolf was now safely locked away in the Baumann parahuman containment center, so that problem had been dealt with.

She looked at the chair in front of her again. She'd decided to stay silent for a few minutes to see how the girl would react under pressure, but she'd somehow gotten a phone from somewhere and was playing games on it.

"So Sely, or should I say Gadget? That's the name you were going by, right?"

"uh-huh…" she replied, intensely focused on the tiny screen in front of her.

"Put that away when I'm talking to you young lady." Piggot said, calm yet determined.

The girl chucked the phone over her shoulder, roughly in the direction of the trash can. She missed, and Piggot winced after seeing the phone's screen crack.

"You going to clean that up?" she asked.

"Nah… no need," Sely replied.

"So, as I was going to say, please explain, in your own words, what happened today."

"Today? Let's see… I entered your office, I sat down, you ignored me, and I got a high-score in snake. Then, you wanted me to clean up my broken phone even tough it'd disappear in like four hours anyway."

"And yesterday?"

"Oh… yeah that would make more sense… Well, this guy Coil wanted some idiots crayon drawings, so he hired Ocean to do that, and some stuff Accord wanted was also in that room, so we got that too. Then, cause everything was going crazy over here, we went to Accord, and he double-crossed us, killed Ocean for medical experiments, and wanted to sell me to the Chinese. I escaped, Accord and his peeps evacuated with portals, and I met up with Dragon on the roof. Also, turns out my dad is Armsmaster."

"That part I gathered from talking to Dragon. What I need to know is details. How did you escape, why did Accord double-cross you, which of his people evacuated, and which got hurt. What kind of experiments was he doing," Piggot replied.

It was refreshing, talking to this girl. Much like Armsmaster, she didn't dance around the subject all that much, which in this case, meant admitting to grand larceny like it was no big deal.

That said, the girl was fourteen, and working for a known supervillain. It was quite easy to figure out that she'd been manipulated into it, which would make it rather simple to place her in the wards. All her other outings, including breaking into the domicile of Westlake's mayor, could quite easily be explained as a Tinker looking for materials to work with, or money for funding.

"Well. I mean, we teleported into the gallery, and I send the guards to sleep, then we looped the cameras, blocked off the hallways with foam, grabbed the stuff and got out.

"Next we met with Accord, and I kind of sort of might have really liked the pen he was using… Anyway, Ocean was bringing me back to Brockton with her power when it suddenly stopped, so I made my way back to Boston with a truck and called her. This invisible guy, but, like, he wasn't just invisible, he also wasn't there. Well, he injected me with something and I fell unconscious."

"Othello, a stranger/mover," Piggot said, looking at her notes. "Teleports to places, and is associated with a phantom presence that is able to interact with the world, but generally can't be hit."

"Well, that guy I guess. Anyway, when I woke up someone had bound me to a chair and blocked my eyes, so I just waited until the right moment. Eventually, this chick in yellow came out to talk to me, and when I was relatively sure she was the only one there, I released myself and shot her."

"How did you release yourself, and how did you shoot her? Why didn't you put her to sleep the way you did to those guards in the gallery?" Piggot asked.

"I just absorbed the ropes and stuff. Same like I do with my tech. Then I shot her with a hookshot I materialized, cause the sleeping gun is kind of slow, doesn't work when people know you're using it."

"I see. So that's the blueprinting thing you talked about right? Can you explain that to me?"

"First I thought it was like a pocket dimension, you know, like the guy with the glasses in Para-Crime Investigation Miami? But it's not. It's more like, my power knows what it looks like when I absorb it, and then I can make copies of it. But the copies are perfect copies, and I can't reabsorb them. So, like, my old phone over there, I can't put in new numbers, and the battery is always at 73%."

"And you can make multiple copies of things, even tinkertech?" Piggot asked. Her mind was already swarming with ideas. If this girl had some sort of mass-production power, she'd be able to equip all of her men with tinker-made gear.

"Well, yeah… but they disappear after a while." Sely said.

Well, that was annoying. Still, there might be something there. A Tinker that couldn't be separated from her gear.

"And that's how you got your Stranger rating, automatically destroying any evidence that could have been gathered."

"I guess… but I'm not really sure what Stranger means. I've seen people say it online, but no-one ever seems to really explain," the girl asked.

"Powers pertaining to infiltration and stealth. The entire set of classifications will be in your guidebook, which yes, you'll have to read. Now, are you aware of any possibly dangerous effects surrounding your matter generation ability? Something people might need to know? Better to know that now than to wait until you've gone through testing."

"Not really, I mean, I can only create stuff in either air or water, not in solid stuff. I think. I mean, it did something against that Othello guy, but I'm not entirely sure what it was that happened. Also, I don't really know what happens when it disappears. I mean, does it get replaced with air? Does it just pop out or something? Is it like a vacuum? I've made sure not to create anything edible, cause maybe something would go wrong if you ate it and it disappeared, but…"

"But you haven't actually tried. Good, that's the smart thing to do. Keep thinking like that. You can't imagine the amount of cases that pass by here which regard someone just _trying something new_ for no reason. Now, back to the debriefing. You shot Citrine in the eye. Are you sure she's alive?"

"No… I mean, I don't know. I know it didn't go through the skull, because that's how it works. It activates the forcefield when it hits something sturdy."

"Forcefield? You said you were using a grappling hook?" Piggot interjected. Was the girl trying to hide something? Did she just not remember by accident? It was always difficult to tell when interrogating teenagers.

"Yeah, my hookshots make a forcefield thingy. Cause, normally, lets say you hit some shitty drywall, and you're hanging on to it, the drywall just breaks right? It was on mythbusters and everything. So it makes this forcefield that strengthens the hook and the stuff its in, makes sure everything is in place. Except, you know, it keeps stuff in place."

"Meaning it kept the blood in stasis."

"Yeah, so maybe that stopped her from bleeding out too much, or maybe it means something bad happened. I dunno. Normally, at range, they should stop at the skin mostly, so it'd hurt and get a nasty wound after a while, but not, like, really dangerous."

"So that's a maybe on Citrine, who most definitely had her eye out of commission. Good, that gives us information to work with. And Othello?"

"Dunno. Second time we fought I tried to materialize something inside him, and it didn't work, but he also didn't work. or something. I think our powers don't really mash together well."

"Meaning we have confirmation that more exotic effects might pierce his apparent invulnerability." Piggot said. Well, that would most definitely go into the file. "Anything else?"

"Dunno… there was this weird lady in a suit, with a shitty hat that fat people on the internet wear. She was making portals for her and Accord, and she knew who my father was, I think. Or maybe she was bluffing or something. It was weird."

Woman, suit, shitty hat. Well, that was interesting indeed.

"Very well. Sely, you are hereby under orders not to mention her to anyone who is not either a PRT director, or has equal access to confidential information. All I can tell you is that she's a known and mysterious factor, and that opposing her will not end well for you. She's some sort of incredibly powerfull Thinker, capable of, amongst other things, combat pre-cog to a ridiculous level. Let me repeat that fighting her won't end well for you." Piggot spoke. Better to scare the girl away form that line of inquiry.

Sely was silent, incorporating the new data. Piggot knew that everything that came after her meeting with the woman in the suit would include mentions of Blasto, and that it would look cleaner if that was not mentioned in the reports. FOIA was still a thing, and there were quite a few groups with oversight over the PRT that did not agree with the unwritten rules. Hell, she was one herself, although she most definitely agreed with Armstrong's approach regarding the biotinker. The man could be much more dangerous if he wanted to, and his possible assistance too useful to risk. Plus, he seemed to be content to stay in his lab, performing his distasteful experiments on animals and lifeforms that he created himself.

"Now, I think that concludes all the business I have with you tonight. I will however, be expecting a report on all your other costumed activity, including possible power interactions, the state of local underworld politics, and your actions within that context. Understood?" she said.

The girl audibly gulped, an effect that, sadly, she couldn't manage to get out of the adult version. "Yes ma'am" Sely replied. "But…"

"But what?"

"I don't really… I mean…"

"Look. I'm quite sure you know some of this already, but not everything is as black and wide as the public may think. If you've paid any attention, you'll have noticed that there's quite a few former criminals spread throughout both the Protectorate and the Wards, including young Hellhound. Now as far as I know, the public doesn't actually know of your existence, the local villains only know you as a tinker associated with an out-of-town supervillain, and the only people that know what you did in Westlake are either electrocuted or in an asylum. Furthermore, we can simply tell the public the truth, that you're Armsmaster's daughter, and no-one will expect you to have been some sort of juvenile supervillain.

"Now, that doesn't mean you're entirely off the hook. I'll be keeping my eyes on you, you'll submit all of your equipment for screening, and you'll get counselling for your, well, problems."

"Okay…"the girl replied. "can I go now?"

"Yes, you can go." Piggot replied, and she saw the girl stand up, getting ready to leave her office. "One last thing though," she said as Sely had almost opened the door. "How did you know the Protectorate would be busy during your heist?"

"Not sure, just know that Coil told Rose to do it on that day."

"I see." Piggot replied.

Sely Wallis left the office, letting the door fall closed behind her. Done after a long day, Emily Piggot mentally prepared herself for a few hours of dialysis. Maybe she'd read that new detective in the meantime, Thomas kept saying how good it was.

Shutting down her computer, Piggot cleared her desk, knowing it would be filled with new files and folders the following morning. After searching around for her paperweight for ten seconds, she suddenly remembered Hannah's report.

Oh well, the therapists could deal with that problem.

*** Gadget ***

The elevator to the wards HQ was, in one word, stupid. Someone had quite obviously done a lot of work to make sure it was perfectly silent, after which a big alarm went off inside the HQ that made sure everyone heard it anyway.

Then, like half a minute later, the door opened, and I had an Emma in my face. She was wearing some sort of white bodysuit with blue lines in it, probably designed to channel her power somehow. Not her armour. Which was nice, because it meant I wasn't getting crushed under about a tonne of silver. Or silver-something alloy, or whatever.

I also noticed a dog running around, being really excited because other people were being excited.

"Judas, here!" another girl said, I tried to look past Emma's hair mushed into my face, but couldn't see much.

Then, Emma decided to let me go, giving me some room to breathe.

Looking around the room, I immediately spotted Hellhound, as well as her two dogs, lying on a couch together. The dogs were looking my way with interest, but she was keeping them in place.

I also spotted Missy, the girl I'd seen Emma have drinks with. Which probably meant she was Vista.

What I didn't spot, however, was the beefcake Emma had promised me.

"Where is everyone else?" I asked.

Emma looked like she was about to say something, but it was Missy that spoke up first

"Slumber party, no boys allowed"

"I'm really tired though…" I complained.

"S'why it's a slumber party… you slumber," Rachel replied. She looked distant, mostly just petting her dogs.

"Hell no we're not sleeping!" Missy yelled out. "Seriously, sleeping is like the one thing you don't do during a slumber party."

"Yeah, sleeping is what math class is for," Emma chimed in.

"I know right? Stuff's way too easy," I said. Emma just looked at me weird.

*** Judas ***

Judas patrolled the group, making sure the entire pack was safe. There was a very low probability of people like the mailman infiltrating this far into the building, but you never knew for sure. The pack leader was happy, and Brutus was hugged tight against her. Good, Brutus could keep her safe. He walked further, following his nose. The little girl was still watching the moving stuff on the screen, but there were no strange dogs to be seen, just weird flying girls with strange hair that shouted, but they didn't shout loud, but more like it was shouting but almost silent.

Judas nudged against her leg, letting her know he was there, and she nudged him back in return.

The girl that always reminded him of the nice food was sleeping. She wasn't wrapped in metal today, so he'd have to be extra careful. Boss got angry when he played roughly with most people, but can girl was one of the exceptions, as long as she was in a can. That had been confusing to figure out as first, but playing with her when he was big was a lot of fun. Just like playing with the flying man, or with the big man that took care of boss. Big man was the best. He would throw the balls really far. Boss preferred metal man though. The big metal man with the motorcycle. Judas wasn't quite sure why she preferred him, he never threw balls and was really stingy with belly rubs.

Eventually, Judas stood next to the newest pack member. He wasn't quite sure what to think of her, but boss seemed to be okay with her being there, so that was good. Now that he was close to her again, she also smelled like big metal man. Maybe if big metal man took of the metal he became this girl? No, their sound was different. She also didn't have hair on the bottom of her face. Humans were weird like that.

Inspecting her, he got a good long sniff at her face. If she was a new pack member, he'd have to be able to recognize her.

Judas looked back to boss, and saw that she was still sleeping. Then, he looked at the new girl again. Maybe he could lick her ears a little? Boss would be angry, but not if she was sleeping.

Maybe if he licked her ears a lot he would get belly rubby?

Suddenly, Judas saw the lamp go on. Great! Lamp meant new people soon. New people meant belly rubby! He ran for the door, waiting for the new people to come in.

As it turned out, it was just big metal man. But without the metal. Judas inspected him, making sure it wasn't some sort of pretend big metal man. They'd seen that once. Someone had pretended to be someone else, but the smell wasn't different. You could always smell who people were.

Big metal man without the metal gave him a quick stroke on his head, not a belly rubby. That was why Judas preferred the other men. Big man always gave lots of belly rubby, and the man with a stick had a stick, which was amazing all on its own.

As the big man walked into the room, the little girl gave him a nod. Big man went to new girl, slowly shaking her awake. Judas thought about maybe barking for a bit. Then everyone would be awake, and maybe they could go out for walkies together. Normal walkies, not big walkies where everyone was small. Those were fun too, but Judas wanted a normal walkie.

Sadly, everyone kept being really quiet, so there wasn't really any excuse to start barking. Big metal man and new girl went back to the door together. Judas decided to join them. Maybe if he was also in the metal box they could go on a walkie with just the three of them?

Big metal man without the metal seemed to be annoyed, but new girl gave him a belly rubby, and they decided he could come along. This was going to be fun, he'd get to go on a walkie with a new person.

As it turned out however, they weren't going on a walkie. Instead, they were meeting up with the girl in the white clothes that always smelled a bit like blood. Judas remembered her from when they'd been at the place with all the dogs that had smelled like fighting. Boss had been really happy so he was happy to see blood girl too. Happy enough to jump up and lick her face for a bit. Boss wasn't around to say no, so it was fair game.

New girl and blood girl talked for a bit, and Judas was pretty sure he heard the word that meant tree, although he didn't see any trees here. They also touched for a bit, and new girl stopped smelling like she was bleeding. Also, some papers suddenly appeared in new girl's hands, and blood girl was looking at them. She wasn't very happy with them though, she had a bad look on her face. Judas could agree with that. Papers were boring. New girl should have given blood girl a stick or a ball if he'd wanted her to be happy. Everyone loved sticks and balls.

Eventually, they went to the yard, the little field of grass on the inside of the building. It was slowly getting light outside, and boss would probably wake up soon.

Then, a ball suddenly appeared in new girl's hands, and she threw it. Judas ran after it, he already liked new girl.

*** Gadget ***

The entire morning had been filled with paperwork and stuff, and I'd already gotten very little sleep, so dad somehow managed to call the school that I wouldn't be able to make it. Whoever answered the phone at school also mentioned that I'd "forgotten" to go to school a few days the last few weeks, and he got angry for a bit, which was quickly solved by Judas dropping a slobbery ball in his lap.

Now however, came the most ridiculous part of it all. Image and PR. Dressing people up in stupid outfits and shit like that. Worse, it was design by committee, so it was going to be bad either way.

The committee, in this case, consisted of me, a guy calling himself deputy director Renick, some really feminine guy from PR, and a hippy girl and an old guy with an amazingly crazy moustache from image. I wasn't really sure why PR and Image were separate departments, but apparently they did very different things.

Dad had decided that he very much needed to get Judas back to Rachel just before the meeting, and I was quite sure I heard him mumbling something about limited edition underwear.

The old guy, Johnson or something, was really enthusiastic about my dad being my dad, talking about marketing opportunities and emblems and whatever. The hippy was really enthusiastic about my hair, especially when I told her that Paige kept making it longer every time I had the opportunity to visit her.

Renick was grumbling about having to be there, and the PR guy was just adamant about me never ever using my totally awesome helmet again.

It was, all together, a very unproductive meeting, meaning that we'd have to have another one in a few days, which sucked more than I could possibly imagine.

At least I got out of school today.

Oh, and Rose was still dead, so that sucked. That really fucking sucked.

I looked at the phone I'd been given, the PRT one. It was more advanced than most consumer models, but it did so many different things that it didn't really do any of them at all. For example, it had my schedule on it.

Apparently, I had a meeting with someone called Yamada in an hour or so. Good, that meant I had time to go bother Rachel some more and play with Judas. Probably… I checked the schedule thing, and swapped to Rachel's schedule, which I could for some reason also see.

It said she had private tutoring right now, basically all day. Well, that was useful. That meant I could probably just go downstairs and play with the dogs either way. 


	52. Chapter 8,5

**Chapter 8.5**  
"So I'd hate to be cliché, but, how are you feeling?" the woman asked me.

"Dunno… annoyed?" I replied.

"Can you explain why you're feeling annoyed?" she asked.

"Dunno… I mean… there's a fat woman with a shitty haircut interrogating me about everything I've ever done. My friend is dead and everyone keeps telling me she was using me, and also, I shot someone's eyes out and maybe killed a guy."

"I see," the woman replied, jotting down some notes on her little notepad.

"Oh, and also. My dad, who ignored me for like fourteen years, is a superhero and didn't tell me? And the only friend I have left in this city knew and didn't tell me either? And also my mom hates me?"

"So there's a lot going on in your life, and you're not quite sure why you're feeling what you are feeling. Does that sound about right?" she said.

I thought about it. This stuff, talking about feelings, it was mostly stupid. The proper way to deal with shit was to just move past them, do something else, not to overthink them. Once you overthought things, you started doubting yourself, started agonizing over every little thing. Better to just stay happy, that's what mom always said, that's what I had always done. There'd always be a brand new day tomorrow.

"I don't really know. I mean, I don't really think about that stuff, better to just keep going on," I said.

"Well, that's why we're having this talk. So you can think about it now, so that it doesn't bother you when you're out there, doing whatever you may be doing." The woman, Jessica, I think she said her name was, said.

"Sounds stupid… I never needed to do anything like that before, and that never caused any problems."

"Well, that's one way to look at it. But maybe you could ask yourself, are you really leaving things behind you, or are you just running from your past?"

I… had to think about that for a bit. Not because she was right, but because it was a difficult point to disprove.

I grabbed a pencil, slowly turning it over in my hands, up, down, left, right, twirling this way and that. It was rather interesting, a good distraction when things got boring. My power was useful like that.

"Sely, do you understand my question?" the woman asked.

"It's… No? I mean, no I'm not running from the past, not no I don't understand."

"I see," she replied. "So, do you want to talk about something else? Maybe what happened with your mother back in Westlake? Or your feelings about your father, and the way he treated you?"

"I… I don't know… it's… mom… she, she was never really there but… she was there, you know? Just, there. And now she's halfway across the country, and whenever I have to go visit her she yells at me."

"What do you feel when she's yelling at you Sely?"

I sighed. Was she just going to keep asking me that question? Was she ever going to stop talking about feelings and stuff like that?

"I don't know… I guess, angry? Because she thinks everything is my fault, but it's actually her fault, and she was never a good mother but now dad keeps saying it's because she has brain damage but she was a bitch before that too, so somehow if she's a bitch now it has to be because of the brain damage? And, it's not my fault her boyfriend decided to go play war journalist and then skip town, and he was an asshole anyway, just like the boyfriend before that, and she never actually gave a shit until it was convenient for her and then I'd have to be all prim and proper and do exactly as she said or I'd be ruining everything, and whenever anything would happen it would be my fault, and I know it's not true, because that stuff was never my fault and she just said that, but…" I gasped for air, it had been kind of a long sentence, and it wasn't really done…

"And… and I think that maybe this time it is my fault? Except I know it's not, but I still di stuff that maybe if I did it differently it wouldn't have happened. And, and… and the person that hurt her, Paige, she's actually way nicer, only she's insane, and I kind of wish I had someone like her as my mother…"

Jessica wasn't interrupting me, or looking down on me, or asking me to slow down. She just sat there, and wrote a few things down. Eventually, when I was finished talking, she started speaking.

"Well, okay, yes, I can see how that can cause some stress. So, you said you felt that you are responsible for what happened to your hometown. Do you think that, if you could go back, you would have done things differently? Was there something you could have done that would have made things turn out better? And remember, I am not trying to make you feel guilty, I just want to help you reflect on your past, so that you can actually put it behind you, and learn from it, instead of pushing it away. That can be hard, I know that, but it's how we improve as people, by overcoming our past."

"I… I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe I could've gone to the cops when I figured out who Hallucca really was, but it was kind of already too late for that. And, and maybe things would've turned out differently if I'd done more, but… but I don't know how…"

"You don't have to give an answer right now," the woman said. "And remember, while you shouldn't run away from your past, you shouldn't let it control you either. The you of right now is very different from the you of back then."

"I guess…" I replied. I wasn't so sure about things anymore. I'd fucked up again, this time by actually doing something, instead of not doing something, but still. Could I have done things differently? What if I actually told dad? Or mom? No, not mom, she would've tried to brag with it, probably started dating Rodeo or something.

And dad, well. He'd explained. Explained that he'd thought I was afraid. That I was afraid. I could still remember Glory Girl, just standing there, being invulnerable, strong enough to kill me by squeezing. Like Horn had almost done.

Fuck Horn.

*** Gadget ***

I was sitting in the wards HQ, my HQ, now that dad had signed the paperwork, thinking about the things miss Yamada had said, It had been… weird, to think about all that stuff again. Stuff I didn't really want to think about. But, apparently, stuff I'd have to think about.

Then again, thinking about the past could wait until later, when I wasn't so damn bored out of my mind. Emma was still at Arcadia, much like the rest of the wards sans Rachel and Missy, who were also unavailable. Dad was in New York, talking to Legend. Apparently, my dad knew Legend. That would've been kind of cool if he hadn't lied to me the entire time.

I glanced around, seeing the little touches the other wards had left here and there through the headquarters. Most of it was hidden in their own rooms, but some of it was in the common area. I spotted some weight-lifting stuff that probably belonged to Triumph and Aegis, a set of electrical doohickeys designed to measure voltage, probably for Emma, some sort of whiteboard with data about yesterday's ABB fight, and another whiteboard with little bunny faces on it. Then there were Brutus and Judas, lying comfortably in the corner, having completely dozed off.

And there was a door I hadn't noticed before, one that said workshop. That would probably be quite interesting.

I went for it, throwing open the door with a slam that caused Brutus to slightly open one of his eyes.

The inside was… disappointing. It was divided into three different areas, two small ones, one very large. The two small ones each held a single costume, Emma's and Gallant's I recognized. Gallant was a tinker? No, didn't look like it at least. Emma's stuff was mostly just some really heavy metal, and a few spare tools. The reason it was stored here was probably because it was just so damn heavy. Instead of the kind of plating Gallant's armour had, or the stuff you'd expect on a knight, Emma wore the kind of solid slabs you'd expect on a tank, and moved around in it like it was nothing using her power. How the hell they'd moulded that stuff to keep her figure intact, I had no idea.

I took a closer look at Gallant's armour as well, making a point of it not to look at the other, larger part of the room. Gallant's stuff was well-made, efficient. Yet, I could see that it was very much build to last with little maintenance, there were quite a few systems that could've been improved a lot. It was minimalist, not as advanced as the exterior made it look, but it was nice.

Given the other side of the room, it wasn't Kid Win's work. My dad then? It kind of looked like Rachel's helmet, and she'd told me my dad had made that.

So yeah, I didn't get to know he was a cape, and this Gallant guy got a super-suit. Woopdiefuckingdoo.

Eventually, I had to face my doom, and look at the rest of the workshop.

It was a mess. Tools were scattered everywhere, not having the good manners to simply disappear after use, and all of his projects looked like half-finished pieces of shit. I spotted some notes with careful calculations, printed out of a computer, which he then ruined by making stuff that made no sense. Half his stuff didn't even have a power source, let alone some way to change the…

I was almost convinced Kid Win wasn't a real tinker, this shit was just so bad. Every little thing he'd made, it was like there was no sense of purpose behind it. He'd make a battery for one thing, and then use it in the other, even though that made absolutely no sense, so he'd insert a converter in between that just increased the inefficiency, and then turned the waste heat into a flamethrower component, which just made you wonder why there was an original thing there. He'd have gun barrels without a scope, and scopes that just fitted on any barrel, poorly, with no regard to what the gun would shoot. Worse, half the guns were made out of parts from other guns, and those other guns had then been replaced with other parts that really belonged in, well, a junkyard.

And then there was the fucking cheeto dust covered laptop, which just made it worse because that meant he was working with that shit on his hands, which would totally explain that stupid fucking anti-grav system he had.

Which, by the way, looked really interesting. Really, really interesting.

Only, it was just that, an anti-grav system. Not, like, a sci-fi jetpack, or a gravity cannon or something, but just a subsystem without any reason to do anything else with it. It was stupid, made without any thought about what to actually do with it. Yet, it was also really shiny.

But… if I grabbed it. What if… what if something happened again? What if some asshole overreacted and next thing I knew, the city was on the bottom of the ocean and Lung was also the president?

I… refrained, from grabbing it, and made my way out of the new-age hellhole that Kid Win apparently called a workshop. Once back in the HQ proper, I saw a guy I recognized from school standing by the big computer system, petting Judas while looking something up.

Given that Judas and Brutus were okay with him, he probably wasn't an intruder. So, when did I see him at school?

Oh yeah, that's right, I saw him at school when he was frenching fucking Glory Girl. So, given that he was apparently an asshole… Kid Win? No, that was just Emma disliking him because he was, apparently, a nerd. Given his lab, he was a bad nerd.

It also wasn't Triumph, I'd seen beefcake supreme before. So that left Aegis or Gallant.

Judas had spotted me, and walked up for some belly rubbing. I obliged, and mister computer dude finally spotted me.

"Hi," he said.

"So, you backup beefcake or fancypants?" I asked him.

"Uhm… what?"

"Fancypants I'm guessing. Emma's very selective in calling people beefcake, and you don't look like you have the abs."

"Thanks? I think?" he replied. "You're the new girl right? Gadget, was it?"

"Dunno, dad says it'll have to go through image, and also PR, but yeah?" I replied.

He looked shocked at that, before looking at me again.

"So it is true. You're Halbeard's kid," he stated, smiling.

"I guess? That's what he keeps telling me. Though I wasn't born yet, so no way to really check. Unless I build some DNA shit, but maybe he has some counter-DNA stuff, do you have that? So people can't figure out who you are?"

"Not that I know…" he replied. "You… look a little uneasy, is something wrong."

"Well. Not really, but… just don't go in there?" I replied, pointing backwards. "It's a total fucking mess, also, not my fault for once. It was like that when I got here."

"Ah, you've seen Chriss's stuff. Well, I could lie and tell you it's usually better, but I'm pretty sure that's not true," he said. Walking towards me, he held out his hand. "So again, hi, I'm Dean, Dean Stansfield."

I shook his hand, and replied. "Sely Wallis, or maybe Pierce, I'm not entirely up to date about the legal stuff."

Gallant, Dean, wasn't that bad. Sure, his waifu was, but maybe he just got hypnotized by her boobs or something.

"So, you want me to show you the console?" he suggested, motioning towards the big array of official-looking computers.

"Sure, I guess," I replied. Where's everyone else?

"Had to stay at school, identity stuff, given yesterday's whole thing. I'm rather publicly involved in my dad's company through the co-op program, so it would've looked stranger if I didn't leave early."

"Oh, so that's why Emma sometimes disappears, I'd been wondering bout that."

"You two knew each other right? Back in Wyoming?"

"Sort of, I mean, we never really talked that much, but the schools were small enough that you learned to know everyone in your year a bit."

"So, got any embarrassing stories about here?"

"Weren't you supposed to be the Chivalrous one?"

"Well, yeah, as long as you don't tell anyone. Also, I'll reciprocate with anecdotes of my own?" he said, smiling.

Maybe the wards weren't all goody two-shoes idiots. After all, they had Emma, who… wait, Emma was a goody-two-shoes idiot, she just pretended to be all hard-core.

Well, the wards had Judas, who was pretty cool. Also Dean, who was kind of cool, and also being controlled though the power of boobs, and also him being a guy.

Maybe if I got myself some of those, I could get myself one of those master ratings I kept hearing about?

*** Legend ***

"Armsmaster, nice to see you," Legend said. He looked his old subordinate over. He seemed stressed out, as always, but also angry for some reason. Did that have something to do with the events in Brockton Bay?

"Same here Legend, it's been a while," Armsmaster replied.

"So, what brings you all the way to the Big Apple? I wasn't informed of the reason you were visiting." He said.

"As you may or may not know, we recently recruited a new Ward. This morning, to be precise," Armsmaster said.

"Oh? I hope there haven't been any problems?" Legend replied. Why would Armsmaster travel all the way here to inform him about a new ward in ENE? Or was there something else?

"Not exactly no. Except… she's second generation," Armsmaster said.

"Is that a problem? Did you recruit an Empire kid?" Legend said. Recruiting a kid whose parents had just been arrested was always difficult.

"No, she's not Empire. In fact, I think you know who I'm talking about." Armsmaster replied.

Legend thought about it, someone he knew about, that was second generation, that was now a ward in Brockton Bay.

No… no that wasn't… Rebecca had assured him it wouldn't be a problem.

"I am talking, of course, about my daughter," Armsmaster said. "Fun fact, Dragon has been scanning in some old paperwork, and came across an old document. It regarded someone claiming they had an illegitimate child from a Protectorate member, that wanted money to keep quiet.

"Now, sure, this happens a lot, crazy lunatic calls, agent goes out to check the claim, and it gets handled. Problem is, Dragon did some digging, and there was no paperwork about the follow-up. Plus, there was no mention of the incident in the digital records either."

Armsmaster looked, for lack of better words, angry. Very, very angry.

The man had always had anger problems. Not in the traditional sense, but he still wasn't any good at handling it. He tended to take it out on the first available target. This, combined with the PHO thing…

"Colin, please, calm down and we can talk about this, whatever you think it is," he replied. Luckily, they were alone in the room, this was a scandal just waiting to happen.

"Oh please, you know Legend, if you start talking to people on a first name basis, maybe you should unmask first!" Colin yelled at him, latching on at whatever he could find to be angry at. Stubborn as always.

"Look, I'm sure whoever is responsible for this incongruity had their reasons for doing what they did," he replied.

"Reasons? Reasons! My daughter grew up with some drunken harlot thinking her father didn't want her!" Colin yelled.

"Colin, getting angry won't help anyone, please, just sit down so we can talk about what happened, and make sure it doesn't happen again," he replied, trying to make the Tinker calm down.

Colin, however, wasn't buying it. He should've known better than to try and make the stubborn man calm down.

"Just answer me one question first Legend. Did you know?" he said, anger audible in his voice.

"Look, you've been going through a lot, just sit down before you do something rash," Legend replied.

"I said, Did… You… Know!" Armsmaster yelled

"I understand that you're angry, but yelling won't help either of us. Just, calm down, I'll call director Costa-Brown, and we can get to the bottom of this, okay?" he replied.

Instead of responding, Armsmaster turned around, muttering to himself under his breath. "Yeah, I thought so."

Legend had to admit to himself, it had been impossible to get away from this without problems. The man was stubborn, angry, and had a lie detector. It was annoying though, having to deal with the consequences of Rebecca's actions. The problem was, of course, that the woman had been right in her handling of the situation. Colin's outlook on life was heavily coloured by his trigger event, the feeling that his parents had abandoned him, had been too busy with their own life to care about him. Insert him in a situation where he would be responsible for such a thing, and he would drop everything to take care of his child. It was why the man had once sworn himself to singlehood, although, if the rumours were to be believed, Dragon was making a change in that.

The point was, twenty-two year old Colin simply didn't have any of the qualities necessary for a father, and they needed his skills in the Protectorate. They recruited criminals on a regular basis, they couldn't let an incredibly capable tinker go to, poorly, take care of some toddler in the middle of Wyoming. That, at least, was the rationale Rebecca had presented to him.

"Armsmaster, you have to understand, we needed you, and the world needed you. Your daughter, she could've done without you…" he stated, talking to Armsmaster's back. He didn't even believe it himself.

After a few minutes, he took out his phone, and called one of his oldest teammates.

"Alexandria. We need to talk."


	53. Chapter 8,6

**Chapter 8.6**  
 _May 18, 2010_

"So, after yesterday's disastrous meeting, I thought maybe talking about this one-on-one would help," hippie chick said. She looked happy, chipper, and probably high.

Actually, I wasn't so sure about that last one. Sure, she looked like a hippy, the dressed like a hippy, and she did some sort of liberal arts thing like a hippy, but maybe she didn't smoke like a hippy? It was most certainly a possibility.

I nodded, showing her my general agreement with the sentiment, although if it were up to me, I'd be doing something completely different right now. Like actually going to school. Normally, I wouldn't complain about not going two days in a row, but that was contingent on whatever I was doing actually being more interesting than school.

"So, we can go about it in two ways. We can pick out a name first, and go from there, or we can choose a general theme, and work from that direction. Now, from what I've been told, you already had a name picked out for yourself, right?" she asked.

"Yup" I replied, trying desperately not to fall asleep.

"So, first question, did you ever give that name to anyone, in such a way that it could become problematic?"

"Depends."

"Depends on what?"

"Would telling most of the super-villains in the city be regarded as _problematic_? I mean, like half of them are in jail now anyway."

I saw the hippie's, I should really try to remember her name one of these days, mouth fall open. It all looked very theatrical.

"Yes, that would indeed be problematic. Remember, people can't know about your past, and we can't allow supervillains to hold it over your head."

"Why? It's not like I give a shit."

"Because, in short, you're no Rachel," she replied.

"What's that mean? Also, wasn't she a villain for like, years?" I asked.

"Well, yes. At first, we thought she'd be a disaster. People complaining someone suspected of murder was on the wards team, angry parents not wanting their children to look up to a criminal, etcetera. Now, what do you think we do whenever we get wind of some nasty article about her or anything like that?"

"Dunno? Like I said, I don't really care about that shit."

"Language Sely, it's important in your new position. Anyway, the solution, once we found it, is at the same time both simple and elegant. We go to a local dog shelter, bring a lot of cameras, and have Rachel help people adopt them. Turns out that when people hear horrible things about the girl they associate with saving puppies from shelters, they tend to be rather sceptical about it."

"Even if it's true?"

"Even if it's true. Hell, we even have a _canines for cons_ program lined up to tell people how much dogs can help in the rehabilitation of ex-criminals. People will believe anything if its accompanied by footage of a cute little puppy stuck in a kill-shelter."

"Well, that's retarded."

"That's people for you. So, back to the original topic, unless you have a puppy-creation ability, we can't go with Gadget anymore."

"Fine…" I replied. I guess I'd have to get a new name… but what?

"So, let's start with a theme, something based around your power maybe?"

"So, Tinker?"

"Yes, and also no. Remember, you're not just a Tinker, you've got that pocket dimension stuff going on."

"S'not a pocket dimension."

"Details, details. Anyway, there's that, and there's your father."

"What, so you want me to go by, like, Halberdgirl?"

"Maybe? If we can't think of anyone else?" she said. She had to be trolling me here, right? No way I was going by Halberdgirl. I could barely lift a halberd, let alone the massive thing my dad called a weapon. Although, maybe if I then reduced its weight using the orbs I'd made to reduce my own weight, or some similar system. But then again, that actually reduced it mass, meaning it'd be like I was lugging along a giant styrofoam halberd, even if it was made out of, say, depleted Uranium. But it would mean I could add a lot more stuff into it. Except if I wanted something with different functions, I could just call one forth with my power. Also, if it was as light as a styrofoam halberd, it would also hit like one.

"That's stupid, and I'm not going to go by Halberdgirl," I told her.

"That's okay, you don't need to. As long as, you know, we're able to think of something better."

Ah, so that was the game here. She was going to hold that name over my head to make me comply with her nefarious plans. Well, two could play that game. And I was going to play it the moment I figured out how. I couldn't let some overly shrewd hippie outsmart me.

"Won't work anyway… I'm a Tinker, I'll have new stuff ever week so I don't need a theme," I replied.

"I guess that's partially true," the hippy said. "So we'll have to think of something that makes you immediately recognizable, without any of your technology getting in the way."

Fuck… this gal was good at what she did…

"Such as what?" I asked her.

"Well, take your hair for example. We have orders from above to make sure that you don't wear a full helmet, something about setting you apart from one of the local supervillains," she replied, winking. "So we could do something with that. I was thinking, I really like the coloured streaks, maybe we can build on that for your cape identity? Rainbow hair is pretty distinguishing, and it polls high with the younger crowds."

"What, so I'll look like an anime protagonist in real life? That's stupid, people will notice its me."

"Which is where your power comes in. You apply the dye before going on patrol, and it will be gone when you need to go back into the world as yourself."

"Still stupid… dyeing your hair is a lot of work, and it's stupid, and it sucks."

"If it's so stupid, then why did you dye your hair?" she asked me.

 _Because it annoys my mother_ I thought. I didn't say it though. Instead, I just raised my shoulder for a second.

"Anyway, I'm sure you can figure out some way to make it work. You're a Tinker right? You can just invent better hair dye. And if it doesn't work out, well, there's always Halberdgirl" she replied, smiling.

*** Armsmaster ***

Collin Wallis was pissed off. Sure, he'd never really agreed with Legend. The man put too much value on presentation and PR, too little on catching criminals. The fact that there was still crime in a city protected by someone with his power-set told Collin enough.

He just hadn't expected that attitude to extend towards other people to such a degree.

To be fair, it was probably Alexandria that was ultimately responsible, the cold-hearted bitch. Yet, if Alexandria knew, so did Legend and Eidolon. The three had always kept themselves apart from the rest of the Protectorate. Never unmasking, always in command. Collin knew he wasn't the most social of individuals, but he at least made the time to try every now and then. Shitty as they were, he made sure to order everyone in his team a personalized birthday gift through the internet. Legend just got everyone flowers and a box of chocolate and used his stupid fucking face to charm his way into making it seem like a great gift.

Behind him, he heard the air-sealed door of his laboratory open. Sure, it was a workshop if you went by the official terminology, but you really couldn't compare what he had here to what the likes of Kid Win, Squealer or Leet used.

He turned around from his schematic, and noticed his daughter, an angry expression on her face.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Stupid fucking image with its stupid fucking bullshit," she replied.

"I know… you should watch your language though, cursing only gives them more of an excuse to start meddling."

"It's all stupid anyway," she said.

Collin decided to drop the issue, talking about it more would only ruin things. Instead, he shifted into the mind-state in which he worked best.

"So, there's two things we need to do. First, you need to draw out schematics for everything you've built so far, including stuff you aren't going to use anymore. Regulations are regulations, and if you have access to it in the field, you'll need to know if you can use it or not. You can use my workstation over there to upload the schematics, and Dragon will check them for security hazards and other flaws," he said. At that, Sely sat down in his thinking chair, and sank into it. It was a feeling he was experienced with. At least with Dragon, he knew his blueprints would be checked over swiftly. Back in the days, it could take hours or days before he had a green light. Still, the upside of having everything checked over by the government was that you could use government materials.

He continued. "Then, once you're done with that, we'll get to work on your armour."

At that, he activated the hologram emitter in the middle of the laboratory, which created a three-dimensional projection of a mannequin with Sely's body type. "I was thinking light-weight armour with two layers of forcefields, powered by hyper-dense energy storage devices we confiscated from String Theory, back in the day. We haven't figured out how to replicate them in an economical manner, but if you use your power on them, you should be able to use your copies as a power source."

Sely was now standing in front of the hologram, poking it and figuring out how to work in built-in UI. She looked at him, and said "Okay, but, when do I get to improve your holograms? Because this one sucks."

"I know it sucks, but I need a quantum-locked optical crystallized computing core for that, and Piggot won't approve it."

"Nah, don't need that, just get a regular artificial diamond thingy with optical channels, you're only using three wavelengths for your RGB voxels, so you can manually set the field matrix."

Collin thought about it for a second. Sure, it only used Red Green and Blue right now, but that was because of the operating system behind it and file formats. The device itself could potentially work at any wavelength from 200 to 1500 nanometres. But if he threw that away and focussed on getting only what he really needed in this situation… It would almost be sloppy, single-purpose, but it would work.

"Maybe, yes, I can see that working. Anyway, back to the armour, I was thinking I'll work on the framework with this new Platinum-Palladium alloy I've been working with, and you can get started on thinking about what kind of things you want to implement into it, that you can summon and slot in when you need it. Then, we'll work together on the shields and power-supply, I have some readings on Glory Girl's forcefield I've been trying to put to use, but every time I try, my device burns out after one good hit. Maybe you'll be able to figure something out.

*** Gadget ***

 _May 21, 2010_

I made my way through the third security checkpoint, the armed man checking the little plastic card dangling from a cord around my neck, matching the data on it with regulations regarding the patients in this wing of the asylum. He handed it back to me, and gave me a nod.

"Be nice to her okay? She mean well, or at least she tries." He said.

"I know," I replied.

The long white dress-gown thing Dragon had designed for me felt awfully thin. I knew it wasn't, but it clung to me way more then what I usually wore, even if it did so in an elegant manner. It was better than what I'd been made to wear back in Westlake, although it did follow the same theme. Instead of a French Fleur-de-Lys, the embroidery contained patterns based around the wildlife that lived in the forests around Westlake. Mostly foxes and birds.

Just for this occasion, I'd removed the streaks in my hair, using a prototype dye remover. I'd spoken with one of the therapists over the phone, and she'd said that, even though it probably wouldn't be a problem, it would probably be best if I looked like I did the last time she saw me, or at least close to it.

A woman in a lab coat with a clipboard waited for me, and waved.

"Hi there, you must be Sely?" she said, as if she couldn't see that from the plasticized card I was wearing around my neck.

"Yeah," I replied.

"So, just for safety, let me repeat the ground rules. No powers, no violence, no sudden movements. Don't raise your voice, and if she asks you to do something, be accommodating. Her long-term memory isn't the best, so don't worry about making promises you won't be able to keep. You got that?"

"For like the third time, yes," I replied, annoyed. The guy at the counter of the visitor center had also told me, and the regulations were in the emails as well. This was getting stupid.

"That's good. Now, first of all, let me thank you for visiting her. She doesn't get all that many guests, but it really improves her mood if she has someone new to talk to. I hope all the regulations and security don't keep you from visiting more often," she said.

"Yeah yeah, now can I go talk to her?" I asked.

"Sure thing, she's just behind this door," she replied, pointing at the plain white door behind her, which bore a large metal number 27 on the front. I readjusted the scarf she made me, making sure her present was clearly visible, and went in.

The room itself was, well, nice. It was square, and pretty large, at least 30 feet across, with a door in the back leading to what must have been the bathroom or something like that. The walls and ceiling seemed to be made out of a single piece of marble, probably the product of her powers, and a chandelier provided ample and soft light. The floor was made out of a single piece of wood, which on second look was obviously several pieces of wood melted together in some strange way. One side of the room was occupied by a large and luxurious canopy bed, and the other had a table on it filled with strange and wondrous things. I recognized some rather exotic materials my father had shown me, just lying there.

So that was how they had funded her stay here, by manipulating her into creating rare materials that Protectorate Tinkers could use in their technology.

Paige herself was in the middle of the room, sitting on a large pillow, reading a book. She wasn't really sitting, the word that came to mind was lounging, and I could imagine servants waving palm leaves and feeding her grapes.

I closed the door behind me, and greeted her. "Hey."

She looked at me, puzzled at first, then recognizing me. She put down her book, using her power to create an artificial bookmark, and stood up, walking towards me.

For just second, I was worried. Then, she took hold of me, and enveloped me in a hug that was far better than anything my mother had ever given me. It was also better than the few shitty attempts at a hug my father had made. Armsmaster was not a hug-person.

"Hey," she replied as she kept hugging me. It felt good, safe, even if I knew that I was technically at the mercy of a crazy person now.

"You wanna brush my hair again?" I asked her, speaking half into her bosom, where she'd placed my head.

She didn't say anything, but led me towards the pile of pillows in the middle of the room. Sitting down, she pulled me into her lap, and using a soft brush she'd gotten from I don't know where, she started brushing my hair with one hand, holding me against her with her other arm. The last time we'd done this, she'd kidnapped me, the city was basically on fire, Emma was being imprisoned by O'Neill, and Horn was just about to start his final rampage. This felt a lot better than the last time.

"How has my little cupbearer been?" she asked, speaking slowly,

"It's been up and down, or actually down and up." I replied.

Paige didn't say anything, instead waiting for me to continue.

"I had to wear two casts for my arm and leg, which sucked. It meant I couldn't do a lot of fun stuff. Emma was really nice about it though. Also, I got your present." I tugged at my scarf. "This girl at my new school, Vicky, she was being a real bitch about it. I think she was jealous. Emma helped me with that as well. Oh, and then, I played this prank on everyone at school, and it made the evening news and the newspapers. That was kinda fun. Then, I met this girl called Rose. She was, like, twenty or something, and really smart and cool. She taught me a lot of things but…"

I stopped talking. It still hurt, thinking about Rose, and I felt a few tears touch my eyes. Miss Yamada said that it was okay to cry, that it was perfectly normal. I still wasn't sure if I agreed. Mother always said crying was for useless little girls. Then again, my mother had been wrong about lot of things.

Paige didn't get angry, she just enveloped me in a hug from behind, and wiped the tears away with her fingers.

"Hush hush, I'm here now," she said, as if I was a baby or something. It still felt comforting though.

"Anyway, I made a mistake, and she died, and it was my fault… Also, turns out my father is a superhero? He didn't tell me, which I'm really angry about. But… I didn't tell him I had powers either. Anyway, I'm going to be a superhero now, I guess? Also, my dad has a Canadian girlfriend, but it turns out she's actually real. She's nice, by the way. Not as nice as you are, but I think she's good for him."

"That's nice," Paige said, patting my head before she continued brushing my hair. From the weight hanging from my scalp, she'd been doing her hair-extension trick again, just to have more hair to brush. It felt good, nice and relaxing, like I could finally just breathe. The last week had been a storm of official forms, signing things, meetings with bureaucrats, school, homework and tinkering, and I hadn't really had the time to really sit down like this.

"I still don't have a name," I told her. "Just, you know, can't think of anything. I had one, but they say I can't use that one anymore, and all the new stuff just sucks. It's stupid, and everyone keeps telling me it's important to choose your name, but that doesn't make it easier to pick it. It's harder because it's important."

"Hebe" she replied.

"Hebe?" I asked her.

"Cup-bearer to the gods of Olympus, goddess of youth, associated with the concept of mercy, later married Heracles."

"I dunno," I replied. It was a good name, but… "I don't really like the marrying Heracles part."

"Don't you have a Heracles in your life my dear?" she asked, brushing her finger against my check from behind. "Every young girl should have a Heracles."

"Not really," I replied, trying not to really think about it. Who would even be my Heracles? Certainly not one of the kids from back in Westlake, and most of the kids at Arcadia were idiots as well, especially Chris. Although, maybe there was one, but… "I mean, maybe, but… he already has a girlfriend who's a total bitch, and, you know…"

"Well, that's not really a problem is it now? Just put yourself out there, make sure you look good and that he's impressed by you, and the moment that bitch dumps him, he'll fall straight into your hands."

"You think so? I mean, he's Gallant, and I'm just little old useless me. I'm ugly and short and I'm flat as a board and I can't even keep my friends alive, and I keep making stupid mistakes that other people pay for, and… and…' I said. Tears slowly appeared in my eyes again.

"Nonsense my dear Hebe, you're a Goddess, beautiful, smart, courageous and merciful. If he doesn't want you, then that's because there's something wrong with him, not with you." She replied. For a few seconds, she stopped brushing my hair. With one hand, she removed the tears from my eyes again. With the other, she held out a mirror in front of me.

I looked at it, seeing myself, with Paige's face looking over my shoulder. I didn't see whatever she was seeing.

"Look again Hebe," she said.

I looked again, not seeing anything else. There was me, my blonde hair now ridiculously long at the back, but the locks in the front framing my face. Somehow, instead of obscuring everything and making me look like a mess like it usually did, it actually looked kinda neat now. Still, that was just Paige's power, not anything I could do…

Her empty hand went out and rearranged my scarf a bit, giving it one-and-a-half loops around my neck, flowing down on the left and right, stopping just past the area where Dragon's dress-thing hugged my curves.

My curves…

The fuck… I had curves? When had that happened? Was Paige responsible for that? No… she couldn't do people, she only affected hair because it was technically already dead, and therefore not alive.

So… I'd finally gotten curves. Sure, they were nothing compared to Emma's, but she wasn't in direct competition anyway, her focus was on beefcake and beefcake alone.

I thought back to one of the things Jessica had said, about growing up, moving past your faults, turning into a woman. Was this the result of that? Probably not, but it fit in a nice little metaphorical way. I was growing up, I was improving myself, I was turning into a young woman instead of a little girl, and that young woman was kinda hot. Or maybe cute, cute was better. No way I was hot, but I was cute.

*** Hebe ***

Hebe. Cute and rainbow-haired, covered in sleek form-fitting armour and two forcefields, yet as light as a toddler. Yeah, I could work with that. Hell yeah, I could work with that.

Only, if I was Hebe, did that mean my father was Zeus?

He better not cheat on Dragon. 


	54. Timeskip: Hebe

Timeskip: Hebe

"For ten years now, I have been stationed here, protecting the people of this fine city" my father's voice came out over the loudspeakers.

Quickly, I snuck a glance past the edge of the makeshift stage, and spotted the crowd.

"Ems, there's like ten thousand people out there," I said.

"I know right? Way more than at my introduction. The Protectorate as a whole is really popular right now after the Empire thing, and you get to reap the rewards."

"Rewards? The fuck… Emma, there's THOUSAND OF PEOPLE out there. I can't talk to that many people."

"Just pretend they're all dogs and you have a ball. Usually works," Rachel chimed in. I decided to follow her advice, since she actually did TV stuff a lot. Had a youtube channel and everything.

"Just a few weeks ago, The gang known as the Empire Eighty-Eight decided to circumvent justice, and attempted to intercept a prison transport carrying the notorious murderer Brad Meadows, better known as Hookwolf," my father went on. It was probably pretty impressive looking, but no-one in the audience knew he simply had the prewritten words scrolling through the UI of his helmet

I put the image of the crowd in my mind, and imagined them as dogs. Big, six feet tall monstrosities, drool flowing from their jaws, bones jutting out of their bodies at weird angles.

Yeah, no, that wasn't going to work.

"Come on Hebe, your costume's great, they'll love you!" Vista said. I took a final look in the mirror as my father droned on in the background.

"Long story short, thanks to an effort put forth by our local capes, as well as some out-of-town assistance from Chevalier and Myrddin, I now declare this city Nazi-free." He said. I'd heard him talk about that line, and I'd seen the PHO thread. This was a way of including Leet in the list of people that helped, while making those not in the know think he was talking exclusively about New Wave.

I heard the crowd roar in the background. Even if it wasn't true, the remains of the Empire were still there for now, the general idea was correct. The main roster of the Empire had been arrested, and was being held in different sites across the countries until they had their day in court. Analysts had been babbling about power vacuums and stuff like that, but ultimately, the mood in the city was positive.

I checked the mirror, this time no getting distracted by my father's speech. It had stopped anyway, this was the part where he'd let the mayor talk for a bit, and everyone pretended mister Christner wasn't a drooling idiot that didn't actually have anything to do with the whole heroing thing.

The lowest layer of my armour was made out of a flexible white cloth that consisted of some sort of metamaterial Dragon had copied from some South-American guy. It was basically a sleeveless dress, starting halfway down my neck, going down all the way to my thighs, where it was met by tights coming up from my feet, made of the same material. The properties of the material were designed in such a way that they helped conduct my last line of the defense, a near impenetrable forcefield, based upon some ideas my father had gotten when studying Glory Girl. It was a weird thing. It was ridiculously strong, and nothing we'd tried had broken through it, except for the fact that basically any hit would make the shield generator short-circuit and fry itself.

The cloth kept it to my forcefield and legs, while two armbands and a hairband disguised as ancient jewellery helped cover my arms and head.

On top of that was the armour layer, which consisted of sleek form-fitting cobalt-blue metal plates. It served both to protect me from whatever came through the outer forcefield, and as a harness for my field generators, power source, mass-reduction, and whatever else I thought of later on.

The white cloth of the lower layer was clearly visible between the plates, as they didn't interlock. Unlike normal armour, which covered the vitals because any hit to those would be lethal, the plates were optimized to take hits in general. As long as they were stopped by the armour, I didn't need to refresh the final barrier, and the final barrier would stop anything.

The plates covered my torso, as well as my upper legs. A few smaller segments also covered my upper arms, but they were kind of cold against my skin, so I'd settled for slightly less defence there. My lower legs were covered by sturdy metal boots of the same colour that contained a hidden spring system, which helped as a landing mechanism for when I used my hookshots.

My lower arms were the only part where my skin was visible, besides the face. Apparently, bare arms were a thing in classical Greece, and the requirements from the Image team nicely matched my need to have my hands largely free of obstacles. The only thing there was small semi-translucent blue bracelet, which served as an anchor point for the lower forcefield. I couldn't actually remove them properly, as they were one solid piece, but that didn't matter, because I just summoned them in a position in which they were already on.

"Now that we've had the boring part, I have another announcement to make" my father suddenly said. The segment with the mayor was over.

On my head was a visor with a HUD in it, which covered the entirety of my eyes, starting just above my eyebrows, and only barely letting my nose through. It was basically a blindfold, only translucent to me, hooking back to my ears, where they combined with the hairbands that extended the aforementioned forcefield upwards.

The array of three hairbands held my hair to my head, with one of them on top, one at the back, and one just in between. After the last one, my hair fell down to my back.

I hadn't really managed the full rainbow hair dye thing Image wanted me to do yet, but I had managed to create some easy-to-apply stuff. Right now, most of my hair was the same cobalt blue that came back in the armor plating and visor, while the hairbands and the tips of my hair were the same colour of white as the lower layer of cloth.

"Now, unlike what the PR team wants you to believe, us parahumans are still, you know, human. We fall in love, we break up, we make mistakes when we are young. And sometimes, out of those mistakes, something amazing comes forth."

Oh yay, my dad was calling me amazing on tv, way to make a good first impression…

"Come on Sely, you can do this," Emma said, trying to give me moral support.

I looked in the mirror one last time, spotting the shimmer of the outer forcefield, a far less subtle affair that drastically slowed down anything that approached me at a high velocity, which included Velocity. He wasn't very happy with that.

I saw the mayor walk off-stage, exiting in our direction. As he walked by, he put a friendly hand on my shoulder, and said "Just imagine they're all naked, that's what I always do."

"Does that mean I can arrest them for crazy sex crimes?" I asked. He kept on walking, probably entirely unsure of how to respond. Heh, he was almost as stupid here as he had been when I'd extorted him with Rose. Luckily, he hadn't known I was in the building back then.

"So, without further ado, let me introduce the most important person in my life, my daughter, Hebe." My father said, holding his hand out towards me. To my side, the image lady signalled for me to walk on stage. Instead, I froze up, right until the moment that Rachel decided to start pushing me forwards onto the stage.

Once I was in full view of the assembled crowd, which filled practically the entire boardwalk, I started really hearing the cheering. Slowly, I walked towards my father, who made a step to the side so we could share the microphone, and put an around my shoulders.

I'd completely forgotten my text, and the words scrolling through my HUD were a blur I couldn't read through the nerves. Still, I opened my mouth, and a few words escaped anyway.

"I thought you said Dragon was the most important woman in your life," I told him. Forgetting that the microphone was broadcasting it to everyone in the crowd.

My dad was stunned, just as useless as I was without a script.

"Look sweety, you can't just go around believing everything a man says to the woman he's in love with," he replied.

I could hear the ooohs and aaahs from the crowd, even though I couldn't see anything through all the photography flashes.

We stood there for a few seconds, neither of us exactly sure of what to do, with the production people shouting at each other, audible in our earbuds. Just before things got even more awkward, something happened to the stage lighting. Turning around, I saw Dragon's face projected on the screen at the back of the stage.

"Armsmaster… I think we need to have a talk about truthfulness," she said, a smile on her face.

Ah, good, Dragon would know what to do. Someone who spent her entire time locked in her home in Vancouver was much better equipped to handle a social situation like this.


	55. Timeskip: Rachel

Timeskip: Rachel

"This is Mac, he's a German Shepherd, he's three week's old, and he has a shy but adventurous personality," Rachel said, trying desperately to keep looking at the camera while the puppy was licking at her face. She wanted to teach it not to do that, as it would be a bother once he was grown up, but Glenn said that people loved puppies licking faces.

For the third time that hour, Rachel thought about how people were fucking idiots.

"Now, Mac and his brothers and sisters were rescued from a puppy mill, where his mother died from starvation," she said, keeping to the script. It was stupid and ridiculous, but Jessica insisted that listening to Glenn perfectly would help the most dogs, so she followed the script.

She stroked Mac's head for a few seconds, trying to remember her next line.

"Even if the animals do survive, puppies from puppy mills are generally not properly socialized, which can lead to behavioural problems, in addition to health problems." she said, doing her best to properly pronounce the longer words. Glenn had made sure there was a machine called an autocue, but Rachel knew she still had problems with reading longer words, so she memorized them beforehand.

"So if you want a puppy like Mac for you and your family, go to a responsible breeder. Or, even better, visit a local shelter to adopt a dog just like Mac," she said, smiling, and holding up Mac right in front of the camera, so that his wet nose would touch the lens cover.

 _"Aaaand cut!"_ The fat director guy said in his directing voice.

"Great work Rachel, amazing! Now, let's get some shots of the puppies crawling around, really sell the cute aspect of it, you know?"

"We gotta do the caretaking stuff first…" Rachel said.

"Rachel Rachel no, there's a flow to these things, a feeling! You gotta go with the flow and right now the flow points to puppies combing over obstacles!" The fat guy said.

In the corner of her eyes, Rachel saw Glenn approaching, wanting to do who knows what.

"No, we're doing the German Shepherd video first," Rachel insisted. That's what they'd planned, and that's how she'd be able to help out dogs with shitty homes.

"No no no, you're all wrong!" the fat guy started shouting. He was annoying, just an asshole more worried about his work then about the dogs they were helping.

Glenn touched the director guy on the shoulder, and whispered something in his ear. Within seconds, the fat man getting the camera ready to film the next video, the one about taking care of German Shepherds.


	56. Timeskip: Sophia

Timeskip: Sophia

Wind howled through the rocks and the treetops, creating a sound that would set your average high-school girl running back home, screaming for her mommy. Not Sophia, Sophia was strong, much stronger than normal girls.

Not as strong as Olivia or Dez though, however much she tried.

She was lying on the ground, her body aching from pain and weariness. She hadn't moved since Dez had beaten her again. This way at least, she had some time to rest.

Her stomach rumbled, and she felt the hunger coming on again. It would be an hour or so until it was time to eat, it was always time to eat an hour after she got hungry. Somehow, Crane always knew.

She sat up, her back leaning against one of the trees. Above her, the storm raged. Luckily, it wasn't raining, which meant they wouldn't have to fight each other for shelter. Sophia tended to lose.

"Hey," a voice said. Dez.

"Hey," Sophia replied, still bitter at losing, still hurting.

"Crane's talking to the lady with the hat again, said she wants us all together," Dez said, holding out a hand.

Sophia hated the gesture, hated that it meant Dez thought she was weak enough to need the help, and hated that she was, indeed, weak enough to need the help.

They walked towards the caves together, and met Olivia near the broken Dragon-suit, the last in a long row of signs telling them that no, they were not going to escape, not even if Dragon came to rescue them.

"What are you doing?" Dez asked.

"Trying to figure out this fucking thing. It's friggin weird, this tinker shit, I keep thinking it should be easier if I use what's already there, but my fucking power just wants to use it as scraps," Olivia replied.

"Crane doesn't like it when you curse," Sophia said. Even worse, Crane took it out on all three of them, not just on Olivia.

"And she'll probably be angry if she figures out you've been meddling with that," Dez pointed out.

For just a second, Dez zoned out. She was using her power.

"Five hundred push-ups, a night without food for all of us, or another fight against her, she doesn't hold back there," she said.

Sophia knew what that meant, it meant it would be bad. Might be something else than figuring out what Olivia had been doing, but you never knew. Dez's visions were rather inconsistent.

"C'mon, we should hurry, before she comes looking for us," Dez said.

"Fine," Olivia replied.

When the three of them arrived at the clearing in front of the caves, it had started to drizzle. The water wasn't pouring down yet, but it probably wouldn't be long. Crane had a phone, one that got news about the weather, although she claimed to be able to see that from looking at the sky. She had known it would start to rain at this moment. She always knew everything.

She was still talking to a strange, impeccably dressed woman with a hat. She recognized the make, a fedora. One of the type that Greg fucking Veder had once brought to school, he'd thought it was cool, no-one had agreed. This woman could pull it off though.

Behind Crane, hiding in the caves, she saw the silhouette of a person, shadowy and hard to make out. At first, she thought it was a new student, brought here by the strange lady in the suit. That thought was gone once she saw there was more than one of them.

The three of them waited, within sight, but out of mind. Sophia caught herself fidgeting, being nervous on her feet. Crane didn't like it when she did that, it was a sign of weakness. She tried to stop herself.

After a while, Crane was done talking to the lady with the hat, and motioned for the three of them to approach. The lady with the hat stood in the background, observing.

"There's food, shelter, and warm beds in the caves, my business partner here even set up a movie you can watch. I disapprove, but she is the one that made this possible," she said, looking at us sternly.

She came closer, until she was standing in front of Olivia, inspecting her, pulling a few twigs from the coarse clothes they were all wearing, and putting her hair in order.

"There will, of course, be a test," she said, before moving on to Sophia. She stood before her, and hooked Sophia's hair away from her face, putting it behind her ears. She also patted away the mud and dirt on her clothes, making her presentable.

She liked doing that, taking care of them in her own way. It was why they had collectively decided not to clean themselves too much. Every moment Crane was taking care of their appearance was a moment she wasn't punishing or training them.

"Within the caves are several men, useless degenerates really, who have imbibed a certain substance," she said, before moving on to Dez.

"Three weeks ago, we trained in combat while wounded. I took some of your blood before the fight. My associate her used this to modify the substance. In other words, you may recognize some of their abilities."

Sophia's eyes went back to the group assembled in the caves, and looked at the shadowy figure. That was her power, or at least a poor imitation of it.

She was done fidgeting with Dez, and looked at Sophia. "Once you're done, I need to talk to you Sophia. Now go."

Sophia shifted, and dashed forwards, while she heard Dez cry out behind her.

"I can't read them!" she yelled. "Fuck, this hurts…"

Well shit, they'd pay for that. No cursing around Crane, and certainly not around her guest, those were the rules.

Sophia dashed into the caves, right through one of the _degenerates_ as Crane had called them, before turning around, shifting back, and kicking through the man's ankles. He cried out, and a piece of rock came up from the ground, animated somehow. Annoying, but nothing compared to Olivia.

The fight went… quicker than she'd expected. The men they were up against were both untrained and unfocused, and while their strange powers certainly added an element of surprise to the fights, Sophia and Olivia blasted right through them.

In all honesty, she couldn't even see them as people anymore, they were more like, well, very lively training dolls that tried to dodge.

About halfway through the fight, Dez did something that caused the more skilled opponents, the once that saw her coming, the ones with Dez's powers, or a weird version of them, start becoming unfocussed. Feedback or something like that, using precog powers to fight other precog powers. Sophia snuck a glance at the lady with the hat, who seemed to be talking to Crane about something. The lady looked straight back, right into the depth of Sophia's eyes.

Scary, even scarier than Crane was.

Sophia almost got hit by one of the hoodlums, but Olivia managed to have one of her minions, created out of the rock itself, shift the floor beneath them, allowing Sophia to evade.

"Thanks," she said, begrudgingly, before continuing the slaughter. There must have been at least thirty of them, but they'd been put down in a manner of minutes.

"Whoa, check it out." Olivia said, having gone further into the cave.

Sophia joined her, and saw what she was talking about. Someone, probably the lady with the hat, had set up three beds, actual real beds, with a mattress and pillows and everything, as well as a few Pizza boxes, a campfire, and a flatscreen with a generator.

A few seconds later, Dez joined them, mouth hanging open.

Once they'd taken in the scene, Dez and Olivia turned to her.

"Hey, good luck," Dez said.

Olivia just put a hand on Sophia's shoulder.

She hated it, being the weakest of them, being so damn useless here.

Slowly but surely, taking care to avoid the broken men lying on the floor, Sophia made her way outside, back to Crane.

The lady with the hat was gone, and Crane walked towards Sophia.

"Sophia, my lovely little Angel, why do you torture yourself so?" she asked.

Sophia had no idea how to answer, and she was too afraid to give the wrong answer to try. A slumber party with pizza and a movie sounded like a good idea right now, even if it was a tad childish.

Crane's hand cupped Sophia's face. "Speak up Sophia."

"I don't know what you mean…" she replied. At least it was true, if nothing else.

"Why do you measure yourself to them, when you are not like them? You are a parahuman Sophia, one of a few individuals that can be said to be truly unique. You saw what you did to those simulacra back there. Why do you measure yourself against Olivia and Desdemonda, when the only useful yardstick is yourself?"

"I… you make me fight them, and I lose… how could I not?"

"The only one you lose against is yourself Sophia, You are the one that fights on their terms. Think. You are the one going hungry, getting cold, so wait. Wait until they are in the same state, then strike. It is useless to measure yourself against others, I have been teaching you that since your first day. Try to finally get it through that preciously little skull of yours."

Sophia closed her eyes, trying to take in the words. They made sense, but they didn't… She thought back to the good old day, to Brockton Bay, tearing down the degenerates, being better than them. If she was going to believe what Crane was telling her… She could accept that the incompetence she felt here was false, useless, and wrong. But the feeling she'd had back in Brockton Bay? That thrill that came with absolute domination? If her only yardstick was the self, was everything she'd done useless?

She strolled back to the cave, dragging her feet. Someone had removed the broken bodies, hat lady probably. All that remained was some blood, it wasn't relevant. As she reached the other girls, she saw that they'd taken their mattresses and put them on the floor in front of the TV, and were sharing their blankets and pillows. It looked warm and comfortable, inviting, friendly even.

Dez pointed at the empty spot they'd left for her, right in between the two of them. They'd been prepared for the worst, for what usually happened when Crane wanted to have a talk.

This time, Sophia had gotten away without physical damage. Mentally however…


	57. Timeskip: Panacea

Timeskip: Panacea.

Amy Dallon calmly walked through the hallways, ignoring the running and yelling students. This time, it wasn't a fake attack by Uber and Leet that had gotten them riled up. Instead, it was just the end of the last day before the summer holidays.

The end of her work at school, which signalled the beginning of her work at the hospitals. It sucked, but the alternative was worse. The alternative meant being a monster.

"Hey Amy, wait up," a voice called out from behind. Not one of her usual friends, but a voice she recognized nonetheless. One of the wards, the newest one, Armsmaster's daughter.

She turned around, and saw the girl jogging towards her in a long sundress that went down to her ankles, accompanied by a thin scarf. Unlike her costumed identity, where she had all of her hair swept back with the help of a few hairbands, she now had it framing her face. A simple trick, but it was quite effective at making her look like two different people. Amy had to admit that the girl was pretty in a way she hadn't been when they first met, more than six months ago.

"Hello Sely, excited for the holidays?" Amy replied.

"Dunno? Sorta kinda? I mean, it's still mostly work, but I'm spending a week with my uncle in Boston, and dad's planning a trip with a few of his old friends, probably his girlfriend too. What about you?"

"Uncle in Boston? Do I even want to know?" Amy asked.

"Probably not? Although I think you'd like talking to him, shared interests, you know?"

"Sure… Carol will kill me if I meet him, but I admit it might be interesting…"

"Anyway, you try that tree thing yet?" Sely asked, again.

"Why are you so insistent on my using my powers on trees?" Amy asked back.

"Well, cause, you know, you can use your power on one living thing right? Well, I heard about this forest that was actually just one tree, connected underground. And also, I know you can take one plant and graft it to another, and it'll continue like it's just one plant. So I thought, maybe you could take a tree, and make it grow together with another tree so it's just one tree but with two, you know, tree trunks."

Amy started thinking about it. It might work, emphasis on might. She was able to feel donor organs, so grafted plants should also work. It was just completely useless and a waste of time. Then again, it was the last day of school, so maybe she should do something useless?

"And then from two trees to three, to four, until I can feel every tree in the city?"

"Every tree, ever bush, every field of grass, I don't know? Wouldn't hurt to try right?"

"Fine, I'll try," Amy replied.

"Come on, let's go, there's a big oak in the schoolyard you can use."

Amy strolled after the girl, not entirely sure what to think of the entire situation. Oh well, it was better than having to listen to Victoria going on about how she was going to Florida with Dean and his parents.

The two of them exited the building, and walked towards the old tree.

"Well, here goes nothing," Amy said, touching the tree, using her power on it. At first, it was muted, but that changed when she pushed her fingers behind the bark.

Her awareness extended, and she understood the trunk, the leaves, the roots, and all the plants the roots were connected to. From there, it just kept extending outwards, going from tree to tree. She could feel trucks driving over roots that were just below the road, and the pressure of people walking over grass in a park three blocks away. Even stranger, her awareness just kept on expanding.

Before she could lose herself in the information, she felt herself being moved away from the tree. She opened her eyes, and saw that Sely had pulled her back.

"You okay? You spaced out there for like a minute," Sely said.

"That whole tree plan you came up with… connecting all the plant-life in the city? Someone already did that," Amy replied.


	58. Timeskip: Blauwster

**Timeskip: Blauwster**  
Enzio looked out over the small town. It was rustic, hidden between the hills, at the side of a picturesque lake. It was the kind of town in which you'd expect a hidden vampire family, or maybe werewolves that were also shamans or something like that. He wasn't quite sure how that stuff worked, but his girlfriend had been very enthusiastic about those movies.

That atmosphere was ruined by the undercurrent of destruction. It wasn't immediately visible, but quite clear if you knew what to look for. Enzio knew what to look for. Just last year, his own hometown had been destroyed. The Endbringer Leviathan had crawled out from the ocean, and laid waste to Paramaribo.

The following months had been a convoluted chain of events, ending with him, the mighty Blauwster, ruling over several neighborhoods. Together with his subordinates and followers, they had fought of drug cartels, government interference, and a major corporation wishing to exploit his people.

The last month, things had stabilized, and there was a peace of some sort. That meant he'd finally found the time to travel here, and figure out what had happened to his buddy Horn.

According to the internet, the entire town had gone crazy, Horn had grown to a ludicrous size, and everything had ended with Horn dying. He was here to find out who was responsible.

He entered the town, and went for his first target, the local morgue. With some persuasion, the mortician would be able to tell him the cause of death. Then, he'd check that with a list of local capes, and he would have his target. If not, he had other methods. Mercenaries, providing both physical feedback and thinker abilities, were within his budget.

The people of the town quickly crossed the road when they saw him on the sidewalk. That made sense, his outfit could be rather discomforting for those who did not know him. He was pretty sure it was the skulls, for some reason, those freaked people out.

Halfway through the town, he was surprised by a young girl falling from the skies, bouncing up and down, literally, on the pavement in front of him. Enzio chose to be courteous, and waited until she stood still.

"Yer Blauwster aren't ya?" the girl asked.

"That is correct" he replied, hoping that the girl would be able to understand him through his accent. "And you are?"

"Skip," the girl replied. He looked at her, and spotted what seemed to be nets and some sort of strange grenade attached to her belt. In case the girl got in a fight, she had probably been instructed to jump as high up as she could and drop her equipment on her enemies.

"Could you tell me how you know my name, Skip?" he asked.

"Sure thing, Horn had a picture of you, said you were cool. That was before though," the girl said.

"Before what?" he asked her. Had this girl been there when Horn died?

"fore he went cuckoo."

"Went cuckoo? I am not familiar with that expression."

"He let his anger get the better of him," a voice said from behind.

Enzio turned around, and saw a man dressed in perfectly normal American clothes.

"The name's Rodeo by the way," the man continued.

"Blauwster, but I think you already knew that," Enzio replied.

"Horn was frustrated, his enemies hiding behind laws, regulations and deceit instead of fighting him head-on. Eventually, he went berserk, and started attacking innocents, instead of just his target."

"I see," Enzio replied. "How did you manage to stop him?"

"By accident. A power interaction gone wrong and a young and inexperienced electrokinetic using too much power. No-one could have seen it coming. And don't bother looking for the girl, she left the city after it happened," Rodeo said.

Rodeo was, quite clearly, not very good at this, he'd given up much more information than he'd thought he'd given.

"And you let this happen? He always told me he looked to you for guidance." Enzio said.

"I know, and I still lie awake at night, knowing I failed him," the man said. He looked like he wanted to say something else when his phone suddenly activated with an alarm.

The man looked at it, and fear touched his face.

"What's wrong?" Skip asked.

"An Endbringer, Leviathan, Amsterdam. Hitting in thirty minutes."

"How do you know this?" Enzio asked.

"Some sort of prediction algorithm from Dragon and a few other tinkers."

"Dragon? Then I shall trust it. We can handle this conversation later, am I correct in assuming you have transport?" Enzio said.

An accident caused by a young electrokinetic. There was little to find there. Instead, he could honour his fallen friend by fighting the beast that had brought them together.


	59. Timeskip: Lung

**Timeskip: Lung**  
Kenta lazily strolled forwards, giving the fear time to sink in.

The fools were pleading, grovelling, asking for forgiveness. They probably didn't even know what they had done wrong.

"Kurosaki, what did I tell you three weeks ago," Kenta asked her.

"Please sir, they insulted our honour, we couldn't just let them…"

Kenta didn't let him finish his sentence. Instead, he grabbed the man's face with his hand, and started heating it up.

As the man's underlings looked how their lieutenant was being baked alive, Kenta spoke to them.

"The Empire is gone, and we reign supreme. This is good. But, it also means the Protectorate dogs are looking at us, looking for an excuse. As long as we rule with honour, and defeat all comers, they will look the other way."

He released his lieutenant, who fell on the ground, clutching at his burned face.

"Please forgive us, please," the man said, pleading.

"I shall be merciful, your men shall live," he replied. He took a step forward, and placed his leg on Kurosaki's stomach. He pushed down, and burned.

"Watch, remember," he told the assembled men.

The lieutenant screamed while he slowly burned. After slow minutes, he went silent. Kenta moved on, towards the reason he was here.

A man, someone that fancied himself a warrior, beaten up. His girlfriend, mutilated, gashes along her face. They looked at him with fear, the kind of fear that attracted TV crews.

"The man responsible is dead. Go to the central hospital, Panacea is there right now, she can fix you up," he said, hating himself for having to do this.

He took a wad of money from his pocket, and threw it at the woman. "Get yourself a smarter man," he grumbled.

As he left the room, the automatic alarm message on his phone went off. He looked, wondering what it was.

Leviathan, in a place called Amsterdam. That was Europe, wasn't it? He wondered… Kyushu… Leviathan was not an enemy you could fight. It was a force of nature, he might as well try to punch a hurricane or an earthquake.

Then again… He knew perfectly well what a precarious position he was in. Yes, he was strong enough to beat the entire Protectorate here, but what if they caught him off guard? What if they brought in reinforcements that countered him? Using a Master, like the Yangban had?

Before, he had been the only real force opposing the Empire eighty-eight. They couldn't take him down, because that meant letting the Empire win. Now that the Empire was gone, and he was on top, they did not have that excuse.

He had already started culling his troops, cutting out the less dependable parts, those most likely to cause trouble in public.

Fighting Leviathan would be useless, in the sense that he could not be defeated. But the Triumvirate, Alexandria, she thought differently. If they thought they had his help in these fights, they would think twice before arresting him

He opened his phone, and called his second-in-command.

"Moshi moshi" Oni Lee answered.

"Oni Lee, I will be travelling to Amsterdam today, take care of the homefront," he said, before hanging up.

He felt the fire within him, aching for a fight. This would be useless, but it might be fun. This time, he could fight without worrying about his hometown.


	60. Timeskip: Argenta

**Timeskip: Argenta**  
"Hey bro," Emma said over the phone.

"Sis…" her brother's voice said. "You're going, aren't you?" he asked.

"Teleporter arrives in four minutes…"

"Be careful, okay?" he asked again. It was weird, Emma though. She was the one going into an incredibly lethal battlefield, yet her brother was the one tearing up.

"If I don't make it, tell mom and dad I love them, okay?"

"Why don't you call them instead?" he asked, accusingly.

"It's just… you know them. I'm still their dainty little girl and… Look, it's just… I have to do this, okay? I'm not stupid, I know the numbers, and I know we can't lose. I have to do this, because if I don't, everything I do here is ultimately futile."

"I'll tell them…" he said. Emma could hear the tears in his voice… he really was taking this badly.

"Bye" she said, hanging up.

She looked around the Headquarters. Triumph was already waiting for them at the entrance, his gear improved with an extra layer of body armour for the fight today. Rachel was ready too, Judas and Brutus had already been partially enhanced, and bulged with muscles. Vista stood in a corner, fidgeting with the special Armband they were all wearing, obviously nervous, but Alexandria had put in a request specifically for her, and she'd wanted to be taken seriously.

"Let's go" Triumph said.

Brutus, recognizing the words, ran forwards to Triumph's side. Judas stood right next to Rachel. They didn't know what was happening, just that they were going out again. If only she could be so naive…

"This is everyone?" Emma asked the team leader.

"I think so yeah, the rest isn't cleared for S-class stuff for one reason or another," he replied.

They all strode into the elevator, an made their way to the ground floor. Once the silent door opened, Emma heard two yelling voices.

"If Argenta can go why the fuck can't I? It's my fucking algorithm too, why can't I fight!?" Sely yelled.

"Argenta can go because her parents said she can go. I'm your father, I'm saying no and you will listen to me!" Armsmaster yelled back.

"You're the one that wanted me to be a fucking hero! Let me be one!" Sely returned, still ridiculously loud.

"You don't know what you're talking about, I do. You're not going," he said, trying to calm down.

"Fuck you," was all Sely could yell in return.

Armsmaster looked at the four of them walking out of the elevator, and decided to end the conversation.

"I can't focus on the fight when I'm worrying about you, so you're staying here. That's it, final word. You can either go down to your HQ and monitor the fight from there, or you can be grounded for the coming year, your choice." He said, laying down the dad law.

Sely gave up, and walked towards them. As she passed, Emma gave her a final hug, neither of them saying anything.

On the side, Emma spotted a van that belonged to the police, filled with dog crates, each and every occupant having some experience working with Hellhound. The guy in charge had released the dogs, which ran towards Rachel, and started growing.

"27 seconds until Strider appears," Armsmaster said. He sounded emotional, which was new.

"Hey, is that…" Assault said, pointing in the direction of the docks.

Lung was walking towards them, shirtless, with a metal mask on his face, scales barely visible beneath the skin.

Everyone stood still, tension thick in the air, everyone but Lung, who kept walking.

"Good, I made it here in time" the Dragon-man said, taking care to properly enunciate his words.

Half a second later, Strider appeared in the square in front of the building. Armsmaster exchanged a few words with him, and turned to the group.

"Leviathan is heading for Amsterdam, probably through the Wadden Sea. We're converging on what's called the aflsuitdijk, which separates the sea and a gigantic artificial lake," he said while everyone, Lung included, bunched close to Strider.

The teleportation effect was strange, punctuated by a strange noise, and a rush of air.

Emma looked around, and found herself standing on what was basically a long road, bordered on both sides by water. It was evening here, and water poured down from above. To the left and right, at some distance away, Emma spotted other groups of capes, ready to intercept Leviathan.

"A large amount of this country is below sea-level. That means Leviathan doesn't have to sink it, he just has to breach the dykes." Armsmaster said while offering an armband to Lung. "The moment someone spots him, Vista will use her powers to allow people to converge on his location. Hellhound will ensure Vista stays mobile, as it is highly likely Leviathan will see her as a top priority. That's why we will be taking this fight up north, into the Wadden Sea, which at low tide, which it is right now."

Emma spotted Lung walking towards Judas, slowly looking him over. Hellhound responded by focusing her power on him, making him grow even larger.

"Judas, listen," Rachel said, pointing at Lung, who took that as a sign to jump on top of the dog.

"Don't burn him" Rachel said to Lung, her face unreadable behind her helmet.

"I won't" Lung replied.

Armsmaster continued, "Vista, you'll find it largely empty, so it will be easy to work with. The rest will be up to-" he was interrupted by a small pop, and the appearance of several capes. Instead of being teleported at a distance, spread out over the massive dyke, this was very close by.

Argenta looked at them, and spotted Alexandria, as well as a Brocktonite Nazi, and two capes she didn't recognize.

"These three will ensure your safety," Alexandria said to Vista. Emma saw that Othala was still wearing her prison sweats, with her mask on top of it. Rachel said something, and three of the police dogs, now large enough to ride, walked towards the capes waiting behind Alexandria.

"The last few fights, Leviathan has used the threat of sinking landmasses to force us into a direct confrontation, and used that to take out key targets. We plan to use that against him." Alexandria continued.

 _"_ _NB-17, Leviathan Spotted"_ A voice came out over the armband.

Before Emma could react, Vista started working, pinching space together on the dyke, and outside of it, making a great project much smaller. Lung petted Judas, and pointed in Leviathan's direction, after which Judas started running. Assault, Battery, Velocity, Dauntless, they all started moving in Leviathan's direction, moving great distances through the use of Vista's power. Miss Militia and Triumph jumped on a dog, and Rachel got her caravan of beasts and men ready to move.

Before she noticed, she was the only one still standing there, unsure of what to do.

In front and behind her, even raining from the skies, was water. Water that would conduct electricity, her power. If she cut loose here, if she attacked Leviathan with all her might, who else would get hurt?


	61. Timeskip: Triumph

**Timeskip: Triumph**  
Leviathan roared. Or rather, he would have roared, had he been able to produce sound.

Alexandria flew forward, punching it right in the head, and it fell back. Before he hit the ground, squads of blasters used their powers, hitting it straight through the twisted space.

 _"_ _Tidal wave incoming"_ His armband called out, He looked in the direction of the ocean, past the small islands in the distance.

The water swelled, and the horizon rose. Soon, he could see it behind the tiny island.

Then, right as it was about to hit the first island in its path, a tiny human shape standing on the island raised its hands, and the water flew upwards into the sky, before turning around back into the North Sea.

That would be the young princess then.

Leviathan rose up again, and lashed out, smashing Alexandria into a group of blasters.

 _"_ _Flamekeeper down, Bloodlauncher deceased"_ the armband called out.

Rory ran forward, and shouted, trying to distract the beast.

It didn't work, it simply ran, targeting the backline again. This time however, it took the time to attack the capes in its way. It had figured out what they were trying to do, and turned things around. Now, instead of chasing Vista in order to kill her, it was pretending to do so, and targeting the capes trying to defend her instead.

Triumph kicked his heels into the sides of the dog he was riding, signalling it to run forward, after Leviathan.

However, instead of chasing Vista, Leviathan suddenly turned around, and dashed through the line of capes chasing him, throwing people into the air. Triumph made his dog do a 180, and saw a few seals that had been sunbathing, now quickly waggling for the water, trying to stay away from Leviathan and its afterimage.

Four human silhouettes flew through the air, launched away by Leviathan. " _Speijk, deceased, kaasmeester, deceased, Nachtwachter, deceased,_ " the armband said, mangling the foreign names.

Wait, hadn't here been four bodies flying through air? He wondered who had survived that, until one of the flying bodies burst into flames.

Lung had joined the fight.

The Dragon-man was growing larger at a ridiculous pace, quickly recovering from Leviathan's hits, the blasters, including Triumph, launched an Assault at Leviathan's back, while several Shakers started working on the battlefield, creating walkways and platforms where first there had been nothing but sand, gravel, and small channels of water.

After a few minutes, Leviathan seemed to remember Lung, and remember what had happened the last time they fought.

Instead of trying to defeat the Dragon of Kyushu, it tried running south, back to the large dyke they'd arrived on.

A blaster, Legend, he thought, hit the ground in front of Leviathan with a beam that created large structures of ice, and Triumph heard an enormous pounding noise, followed by the light being sucked away from the fighting beasts. Eidolon.

Strider appeared behind him with a plopping sound, screaming for people to teleport back to the dyke in case Leviathan managed to escape.

Leviathan was going to escape… The field of battle was just too open, too easy for the beast to manoeuvre in. Then again, in a city, he would be able to lose his opposition even easier.

Triumph saw several of the bruised and battered capes move towards Strider, eager to get a short respite. People he knew, and people he didn't know.

He decided to stay, helping against leviathan here, while he was still healthy.

This time, the beast grabbed Lung instead of slashing at him, and threw the growing Dragon into Alexandria, pushing both of them back. Once that was done, the beast ran towards the remaining capes, Triumph included. This all seconds after a great deal of them had left with Strider.

Rory shouted, and shouted, and shouted. Desperate to be heard, to do something. It didn't work, Leviathan ignored it, and just kept coming straight for him.

Over the sound of his concrete-destroying voice, he heard someone else yell, but he didn't pay attention. Leviathan was coming closer and closer, it's arm held back, ready to slice straight through him.

Triumph shouted again, with all of his might, and it worked. Leviathan had been stopped in its tracks by Rory's powers.

Leviathans watery afterimage however, had not. A voice kept yelling. A girl, he couldn't place it while he looked death in the eyes.

The water rushed forward, and in the last second, Triumph shouted at it again. They said that hitting water at high speeds was like hitting concrete, but while he could break concrete, he could not break the water rushing forwards.

Just as he was about to close his eyes, ready to die, a great beast of bone and muscle jumped in front of him, catching the wave. The dog and the water crashed into Triumph, but the beast's sacrifice had taken the brunt of the blow.

Triumph landed on his back in a shallow layer of water, and saw the source of the yelling. It was Bitch… Rachel. She'd send Brutus forward to save him, after he'd spend the last few months looking down on her.

 _Way to be a hero Rory_ , he thought to himself.

He pushed the bloody corpse of Brutus off his chest, and sat up, coughing out water. When he was done, he looked forwards again, observing the fight.

Lung's position was obscured by steam, vaporizing water at about the same rate that Leviathan was producing it, a few other big hitters, Alexandria, Eidolon, Dragon, Armsmaster, Chevalier, Myrrddin, and a few European capes he didn't recognize, where also still here.

Which was when he noticed that the rain was gone.

How the fuck was the rain gone.

"Where the fuck did the rain go?" he said to no-one in particular.

"Her work," Hellhound replied, pointing at a small girl, even younger than Vista, sitting on one of her remaining dogs. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and her costume was, well, it wasn't actually a costume, since this girl wasn't pretending to be a princess.

Vista and her entourage were nowhere to be found, they had probably retreated, waiting for a different place to leverage her power, or maybe they were just happy to be away from the fighting.

Her voice had sounded strange, and Triumph realized Rachel was crying beneath her helmet.

"Dit is mijn country" the girl said. She obviously only knew a handful of words in English. "Ik controleer het weather hier, niet dat ding" she continued, pointing at Leviathan, who was fighting in the distance, any real vision of him obscured by whirling steam clouds. Eidolon had obviously joined Lung in the vaporisation of the water. It was strange, Triumph thought, fighting Leviathan in the middle of the sea with no water around.

"Thank you well for coming," the girl continued.

"Don't sweat it" Triumph replied, scanning the area.

Most of the capes had evacuated, or spread out, or whatever they called it. He spotted a figure that looked like some sort of knight, not too far away, walking towards them. One of the princesses' protectors?

The area was still littered in shaker-created matter, walkways, rocks, pieces of exotic matter, all creating dry areas in which to stand. The sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, but there was still some light, and he could see the glow of cities in the distance. A seal sat in the distance, looking at all the commotion, unsure about what to think of everything.

"Hellhound, get her to higher ground," he said, trying to get the young girl away from the monsters fighting in the distance.

He wondered how the girl had gotten her power. Had it been something horrible, a trigger event? Or had she been like him? Had her royal parents used their ample funds to turn their heir into a superhero?

"She said she wants to watch, has to watch." Rachel replied, but she manoeuvred the dog with the girl so that it was standing on top of a boulder of molten, and then solidified, sand. She climbed up herself too, standing next to the beast. Judas, he recognized, now larger than a van. Most of her dogs had probably gone back to the dyke with the others, leaving her to focus solely on this beast.

He looked back down at the blood and gore covering his chest. Brutus's…

In the distance, he saw Lung rise into the sky, having been thrown upwards to a ridiculous degree. Rather than fall down, the Dragon took flight, and swooped around in a lazy circle, vaporizing the water beneath him with his breath. He also spotted Dragon, having finally made it here from Canada with a slow, heavy-duty suit. Half an hour of prep time hadn't been enough for her, maybe it would go differently the next time, after Armsmaster, Hebe and Dragon had improved their prediction algorithm.

The great metal dragon joined the one made, nominally, out of flesh, and together they blasted Leviathan while it was still reeling from Chevalier's cannonblade.

It almost looked like a dance, the two of them flying in the same circle, striking the same target. But that illusion was shattered as Leviathan managed to break away. Armsmaster stood ready to stop him with his Halberd, blazing with Plasma as it was, but the beast kicked right through it, destroying the tinkertech device.

Leviathan kept running towards them, and Triumph started thinking back to what had happened only minutes before, the vision of Leviathan running straight at him, ready to kill.

But this time, Leviathan wasn't coming for him, but for Judas, or rather, for the young princess riding him. Rachel had it figured out before he had, and mounted the dog, immediately sending the beast towards him. He grabbed at the beast, and Rachel's hand caught his while they madly dashed away from Leviathan.

Behind him, he could see the veteran heroes, reacting slowly to Leviathan's escape. They had expected this, but the prediction had been that Leviathan would go south instead.

Judas kept running, jumping over a wasteland now filled with the remains of parahumans cutting loose with their abilities. Leviathan ignored the knight-cape, and came straight for them, lashing out with its tail, sending a whip made of water at them.

Just before it hit them, Judas dug his claws into the watery sand beneath him, and made a quick turn left. Too quick for Triumph, and too quick for Rachel.

The two of them dropped down, rolling through the small hill of sand. Triumph saw Leviathan looking at them through his impossible eyes, shifting his gaze between Judas and Rachel.

"Keep running" Rachel yelled at her dog, and Judas obeyed.

That had been enough for Leviathan to reach a decision, and it went for Rachel.

Behind the beast, Rory saw Alexandria and Legend, flying towards them to help. They weren't going to make it, he thought, as Leviathan prepared himself to slice through the girl that, Rory had said, was not fit to be a hero.

They just need an extra second, he knew, and he saw Leviathan's arm swing towards Rachel in an arc. The triumvirate would be too late, but he wouldn't be.

Rory closed his eyes and jumped forwards, into the claw's path. He'd always wanted to go out like a hero.


	62. Timeskip: Victory

**Timeskip: Victory**  
It was dark and cold, and beneath the armor, Emma was wet to the bone. Even worse, she'd accidentally fried the Tinkertech armband she'd been provided with.

Still, she trudged on through the water and sand, trying to find her way to the fight. She'd heard a few explosions in the distance, maybe that was where she should be?

Eventually, she came across another channel in the water she'd have to wade through. The entire area was mostly dry right now, but channels like these were dotted through the area. They weren't very deep, but her feet would get wet, and the water made it harder to move her armor.

Still, she crossed the channel of water, and found herself in something that reminded her of the boat graveyard back home. Except where that had been filled with massive commercial vessels, here the ships were smaller, much smaller. What were they all doing here on the sand?

"Usually, the owners just wait until its high tide before going on," an accented voice spoke.

Emma looked at the source of the sound, and saw a terrifying figure standing in the shadows of one of the ships. He was lit up by blue light, coming from an orb of fire hovering above his right hand.

He was armored in what looked like bone plates, and had chains with skulls on them hanging of his body like some sort of cartoon supervillain. It looked horrifying and childish at the same time.

"I presume that, when the alarms came, the people evacuated, leaving their boats behind," he continued.

"Makes sense…" Emma replied.

"I take it you got separated from the fight as well?" he asked her.

"Yeah… they've been moving around so fast, I lost them."

"That's how Leviathan fights work. He's incredibly fast, so for most of us, we get to strike once, maybe twice, before he's out of range. It's… frustrating."

"You fought him before?" she asked.

"Once, in my hometown," he answered.

As they stood there together, in the middle of nowhere, Emma decided to climb on one of the boats, in order to get a better view of the area. She used her power, pushing the metal boat down in order to pull herself up, electricity arcing between her, the boats and the ground beneath them.

Once up there, she saw fire in the distance. Lung, which meant Leviathan.

"Say, you wouldn't happen to be from a town called Westlake would you?" the strange man asked her.

Emma went silent… how had this guy known? Why did he ask her that? What was he planning to do? What was someone who was obviously a supervillain doing so far away from home?

They stood there, Emma on top of a boat, the fireball guy standing on the sand, waiting awkwardly for several minutes.

"It's just… I recently found out what happened to my friend Horn, and…"

Emma started shaking… Horn, the man she'd murdered. Sure, it had been an accident, like that mattered.

"Hey, you all right girl?" the man asked her.

Suddenly, Emma was shaken up by the sound of something large hitting the boat, quickly followed by a gigantic slimy bony tongue slobbering all over her helmet. She looked up and saw Judas, grown to a ridiculous size, a young girl sitting on his back. The girl looked like a princess, like Emma had dreamt of before she realized how the world really worked.

"Hey Judas, where's Rachel?" she asked.

Judas turned around, looking in the direction of the fighting. It was coming closer.

"De Leviathan zit achter me aan omdat hij vloedgolven wil sturen." The little girl said, sounding very posh and proper. Emma had no idea what it meant, except for where she mentioned Leviathan.

"She's saying Leviathan is targeting her," the man with the blue fire said. Slowly, the ball of fire in his hands started growing, becoming less like flame and more like a sphere of hot blue light.

"How can you tell?" she asked him.

"My homeland used to be a colony of hers, we still speak the language," the man replied. "Blijf achter me," he said to the little girl, who seemed to be able to steer Judas a bit. Some sort of control over animals?

Emma looked back at the fighting in the distance, which had gotten a whole lot closer, and was still moving.

"Girl, if you are who I think you are, then you are responsible for the death of one of my friends," the man said. Emma looked at the massive ball of light and flame in his hands.

She swallowed, feeling a lump in her throat.

"You're not denying it…" the man kept talking. "And because he is dead, he can't be here, fighting that thing," he went on, pointing at Leviathan, who was just barely visible through the moving cloud of fire, steam and explosions.

"Sorry," she said, barely audible.

"Instead of saying you're sorry, how about you take his place?" he replied.

Take his place? Did he mean she should've died instead? Or that she should be fighting Leviathan? She was here, right?

"I… if I cut loose, people will get hurt," she said, defending her own hesitance.

"It's an Endbringer fight, people get hurt either way, so you might as well do something." He replied. The blue star in his hands was now larger than he was, providing a massive amount of light, but strangely enough, very little heat.

"Okay…" Emma answered, flexing her power.

She felt the electricity channel through her underclothes, coming out in small, well-regulated streams. It was limiting, which was comforting, but not what she needed right now. She grasped the conductive channels in them, and shredded the bodysuit to pieces. Kid Win, or someone else, would have to make a new one. Preferably someone else.

The limiter removed, she spoke up. "Stay back, behind the ships."

Then, she brought the thunder, sparking to through the area, jumping from boat to boat. Some of them were made of metal, others plastic or even wood, but all of them had conductive components. As for the rest, well, you couldn't expect your ship to stay intact through a Leviathan fight.

Two of the ships, she pushed down, lightning arcing between them and her feet. The rest whirled around her in an electrokinetic storm.

She raised one of the vessels on the ground, and put it down again, just in front of where it had been. It would be slow going, but it would work.

She saw Leviathan coming for them, racing towards Judas, who was still standing behind the man with the flame. Had she been Sely, she would've come up with a line about moths here.

Instead, she poured all of her effort into one of the ships, launching it forward into the beast's face.

It dodged, and she hit nothing but it's watery afterimage. It didn't matter, because she had another boat ready, this one launching into the beast from the side. It was followed by another, and another, and another, each going straight for it.

On the sidelines, outside of her electrokinetic storm, she spotted Lung, who was waiting his turn.

Alexandria had no such compunctions, and danced through the sky in between Emma's blunt objects, punching Leviathan when she could.

Emma roared, unable to hear her own voice over the crackling of her power, and kept beating the beast away.

She finally got a got look at the beast. It was different than in the pictures she'd seen. Parts of its face had been shorn away by someone, and it was bleeding from the arms. On its back, a black scar went from top to bottom. She spotted a piece of Armsmaster's halberd stuck into its leg, and what looked like a metal crossbow bolt had been stuck through its arm.

She arced out, grasping the weapons in her power, and attempted to throw Leviathan into Alexandria's punch.

The creature was heavy, but light at the same time, strange…

As the creature figured out what she'd tried to do, it pulled on the crossbow bolt, removing it from its body. While doing that, it was hit by a flash of energy that seemed to be wrong somehow, and the scar down its back got brighter.

She spotted its source, Eidolon, flying above her. She continued her pattern, striking at the beast repeatedly, the triumvirate probably knew what it was doing.

Suddenly, she saw Alexandria floating right next to her. "Try to keep it in one place for as long as possible. Eidolon's attack is cumulative, we're almost done here."

Emma nodded, bashing at Leviathan whenever he tried to move.

Another black flash of light hit the creature, and it fell over in pain.

Suddenly, the world got bright, and Emma spotted the orb of light that the skull-man had created slowly moving forwards towards Leviathan.

Alexandria obviously saw it too, and punched Leviathan towards it.

Leviathan disagreed, and suddenly went racing away, out of Emma's reach.

And straight into Lung, who punched the beast into the sand, where it was hit by another black flash from Eidolon.

This time, instead of running for a new target, it attempted to dash away to the north, away from the assembled capes. Emma spotted Dragon, placing her suit in its path, firing with purple flamethrowers, but Leviathan dashed straight past her.

Emma dropped her power, and crashed down on the ground. She gasped for air, noticing how tired she suddenly was.

At least they won without major losses, right?


	63. Timeskip: Loss

**Timeskip: Loss**

"Fuck" Colin said for what must have been the fiftieth time that hour. His fist pounded on the bar as he said it and his other hand went for his glass.

"Fuck" Edward replied, chugging another glass of beer.

The bartender, bewildered as he was, immediately refilled it. Whether it was out of gratitude, or out of fear, Colin didn't know.

Colin looked at the hard-wood bar, and noticed the cracks spreading from where his armored fist had hit it.

He took another drink to bury the loss. It had been so long, they'd done this so often... It had been like they were invincible…

To lose both Kate and Harry in one fight…

He felt the alcohol settle in his stomach as the tears hit his eyes again.

Sure, people died in fights like these, but generally, the first fight was the deadliest.

"Why did she even come… I told her she wouldn't be useful here," he complained.

"It's Kate, it's not like she was going to listen to us…" Chevalier replied. The man threw back another glass of beer in one go.

"Are you sure you should be drinking that much?" Colin asked him.

"Bartender's been giving me alcohol-free pisswater for the last hour," he replied.

Colin saw the bald bartender shrink back, somehow shocked that Chevalier had figured it out. He probably had absolutely no idea what Chev's powers were, so he wouldn't know how good the man was with alcohol.

A loud burp came from Chevalier's mouth.

"FUCK!" the man yelled out.

"Fuck," Armsmaster replied.

The bar's door opened behind them, and Armsmaster looked.

Ethan was standing there in costume, looking at the two of them.

"Fuck off and let me grieve" Colin slurred out, all the while taking another sip from his drink.

It was a nice, bitter affair, with hints of spices in it. Kind of a waste to drink it like this, but it helped him feel just a bit better.

Colin turned back to the bar, and kept drinking. Eventually, he felt a weight against his shoulder. Chevalier had finally fallen asleep in an alcohol induced sleep.

He ignored it, letting his friend sleep. A couple of minutes later, his HUD showed him he had a call.

Sely…

He tried to make the eye movement that would pick up the phone, taking two tries until it worked.

"Hey sweety," he said.

"Hey dad…" his daughter's voice answered. "I heard what happened..."

Colin just sat there, not sure how to answer.

His daughter continued speaking on the phone.

"How's Ed?" she said.

"Sleeping…" he replied.

"Dad…" he heard the tone in his daughter's voice shifting, breaking up. "Dad… please don't… please don't leave me too…" she said.

Colin thought about it… He'd given it some thought before, to stop going to these fights… Could he? Could he put his daughter before the rest of the world? Could he not?

"I… I don't know…" he replied.

"Dad… just come home okay? Please? I miss you," she said.

"Okay…" he answered, letting the line go dead.

Colin stood up, trying to keep his balance while waking up Edward.

"Mousy and Myrddin still dead huh?" Chevalier asked him, waking up from his stupor

"Yeah…" he replied.

"Then why'd you wake me up?" Chevalier asked.

"Time to go home, figure out what to do next…" he replied.

"Crane… remember? She was related to the thing with… we need to finish that." Chevalier said. He was rather capable when drunk, had a lot of experience with it.

"Dragon's drone got taken down though… we have no idea where to look," he replied.

"The camping trip… we know he general area, we go looking then," Chevalier proposed.

"I'll think about it…" Colin replied. He just wanted to go home, crash on the couch, and fall asleep. Maybe eat some junkfood.

Together, they stumbled through the town, looking for the ad-hoc medical center that had been located here. Strider would be there, probably.

He'd also need to talk to the mayor, tell him what had happened to his son…

Fuck…


	64. Chapter 9,1

**Chapter 9.1**  
Summer vacation, that most blessed time in a teenagers life. Summer means no school, no homework, no obligations.

Unless you were part of the Brockton Bay Wards. In that case, Summer meant patrols, having to deal with Kid Win's absolute incompetence, and paperwork.

Actually, scratch that last one. Summer meant that the other wards, sans Rachel, had to do paperwork. Me? I'd found a solution for it.

I hadn't actually mentioned it to anyone, I was pretty sure someone would get angry about it, but one of the first things I'd done was create an automated program that logged all my patrols and filled in the paperwork.

But there was still the patrolling, the having to put up with Kid Win, and the, well, however you would described what Emma and Carlos were doing.

They were worse than my dad and Dragon. Like, way worse.

Case in point, it made shopping with Emma even worse.

"You think he'll like this dress?" she asked me, showing of a slim sundress that I normally associated with, well, Glory Girl's fashion taste.

"Going by how he looks at Vicky when she drops by, yeah, he'll like that dress," I replied.

"I don't know… I think the blue one fits me better, but I really like the way this one matches these shoes and-"

"Next time, how about you ask Rachel to go shopping?" I asked, cutting her of.

She looked at me, a slightly angry look on her face.

"Anyway, the goal isn't making Carlos happy remember? It's to figure out what you want for the ceremony." I replied.

Dragon had already designed something for me. Even though she didn't really leave her home, she apparently had an interest in fashion, and had decided I would be the mannequin that would have to wear whatever she thought of.

I was perfectly fine with that, It meant I didn't need to go shopping as much. Except, you know, when Emma needed to find something new.

Sure, image would go over it, completely redesign it and make sure it didn't resemble what Emma wanted in the slightest, but with fancy parties came buying fancy dresses, and Emma wanted me to help with that.

"How about this one sweety? It's from a French designer," her mother said, appearing from around the corner. If anything, Emma's mother was worse than Emma when it came to this stuff. She travelled a lot, so she probably knew what she was doing.

"Mooooom, I can't show up to a Dutch party wearing a French dress… seriously..." Emma replied.

"I think it's the Germans they hate, or the Spanish, European history gets convoluted," I replied.

I heard a bell ringing, the sound signifying someone entering the shop. Half a second later, I started feeling uneasy.

Her again…

About ten seconds later, Victoria fucking Dallon turned around the corner, and noticed us.

"Oh, it's you two…" she said, disappointment audible in her voice.

"Oh look, it's gutless girl," Emma replied, alluding to Vicky's absence in the fight.

"Oh fuck off, my mom didn't let me go," Vicky replied.

"Polite as always, both of you." Amy said, appearing from behind her sister, and sitting herself down right next to me.

While Vicky and Emma had a staring contest, and Emma's mother was looking at more dresses, I started talking to Amy.

"You get one too? For the healing?" I asked her.

"Yeah, it's a different one though, because I technically wasn't in combat," she replied.

"Cool, means I won't be the only one," I replied.

"Wait, you're getting one?" she asked.

"Yup. For my work on the prediction program." I replied. "The civvy one too, with the Lion."

She lowered her voice, whispering, "So I presume Emma is, you know?"

I whispered back in shock, having forgotten about the whole secret identity thing, "You mean you didn't know?"

"I had my suspicions, Vicky is completely unaware, including about you."

"Ahhh, explains a lot."

"So, you got something to wear yet? I'm not getting out of here without Vicky getting me into like twenty different outfits."

In the background, the two big-breasted blondes were still throwing verbal potshots at each other. I wondered how Vicky still hadn't figured it out, it wasn't like Emma's insults got any better when she was being Argenta.

"Lucky you, I'm getting like fifty different things sent to my home by Dragon," I replied.

Our conversation was interrupted by Victoria grabbing a dress from the pile Emma had rejected, and pushing it into Amy's hands.

"Good luck," I said to her as she disappeared behind the curtain of the changing room. She gave me a final wave of goodbye.

When both Emma and Amy were in the changing booths, icky Vicky decided to sit down right next to me.

"So… Dean told me what happened," she said, just as terrifying as always.

"What do you mean?" I asked her. Had Dean tattled on me? Told her my secret identity? If he wasn't such an amazing guy, I would've gotten angry at him for that.

"The thing with those supervillains in Westlake… why you're scared of me…"

Or maybe I didn't have to not get angry at him at all.

"Oh, that…" I replied.

"Sorry for bothering you about the scarf… I didn't know it would remind you of everything that happened," she said.

She was being remarkably nice for someone Emma kept describing as a total SSS grade bitch.

"Okay… it's just… your aura thing, you know… it's scary," I replied.

"Sorry for that… I keep trying to control it, but it can only go so low. It doesn't, you know, actually turn off."

"I know the feeling," I replied, and I started to wisper. "The constant distractions in my mind, always knowing I can just, you know, make stuff go away, make it appear..."

"Wait… what?" Victoria asked.

I held my hand behind my back, where only she could see it, and materialized a sketch of a set of lockpicks I'd designed back in the early days, one that I had to absorb quickly to make sure the teacher didn't see.

"Ohh… so, Emma?" she asked.

"Not up to me," I told her.

"So, wait… your dad's really?"

"yup,"

"Are you sure?"

"Your sister checked, so, yeah?"

"Wait… Amy knew?" she asked.

"Amy and your mom knew before I did, back in January."

"Wow…" she replied. "Your hair's different though…"

"It's cause I hide the shorter stuff that's in front right now under my hairbands. Also, tinkertech hair dye," I replied.

"Makes sense…" she said.

Our conversation was interrupted by Emma throwing open the curtain, showing of a black dress that would probably do better in a lingerie catalogue or something. "Looks great, I'd take this one," I told her, holding two thumbs up.

Hippie girl was going to looooove trying to change this one into something acceptable. Not.

The little bell at the front of the store, connected to the door, ringed again. It was getting busy in the small upscale boutique. This time, there were no well-known teenage superhero celebrities joining us. Instead, I heard a woman yell, very clearly, "your money or your dignity."

I immediately began to rise up, but Glory Girl pushed me down.

"I'll handle it" she told me, smiling.

She lifted herself up, floating slightly above the ground, as Amy exited her booth, and Emma's mother joined us with a panicked look on her face.

Vicky grabbed the rack of clothes that separated our sitting spot from the cashier, and I saw the source of the absolutely ludicrous threat.

She must have been like twenty five. Her brown hair was held back in a bun, a domino mask covered her face, and both the mask and her colourful outfit were inlayed with a ridiculous amount of gemstones. I recognized diamonds, rubies, and some of the more exotic variants I'd been researching while looking for rare earth metals.

Gem-girl hadn't noticed us, and instead kept her attention on the girl behind the counter.

"Your dignity it is then!" she yelled, before making a dramatic hand gesture.

At that, I saw the girl's near skintight pants slowly dropping.

"Hmmm. Turns out it doesn't work if the belt is not what's holding them up." the woman said.

"Ahum…" Glory Girl said, calling attention to herself with her aura. After our little conversation, it turned out that Victoria was actually a really really nice person. Like, really nice. Too bad I'd have to maybe try and ruin her lovelife so I could have what was rightfully mine, but all's fair in love.

"Oh wow, Glory Girl!" the woman yelled. "I love your blog! It's so great to meet you on my first day out! Are we going to fight? Can I have your autograph after I beat you?" she asked.

"You're not going to beat me," Glory girl answered, before she flew forwards towards the girl.

"Are you sure?" the woman asked, before pointing with a finger. A thin beam of hard-to-describe light came out of it, and hit Vicky in her face. She fell down to the ground, writhing in pain. While she kept firing with one hand, her other hand grabbed a small notebook from a pouch on her belt.

"Can you sign it _To Binary, lots of love, Glory Girl_?" she asked.

Glory Girl fell over, and for just a second, the ray stopped hitting her face, and hit her shirt instead. She immediately recovered enough to grab the villainess, and give her a hard shove backwards, into a rack of clothing.

Half a second later, an absolutely terrifying man in a black costume with a weird old-fashioned looking hood came in, punching Glory Girl.

However, Vicky was protected by her forcefield, and recovered almost immediately.

Binary also recovered from the hit, and started talking again.

"Look Glory Girl, I know you're a teenager and all, but you really can't go into superhero fights in that outfit," she said. As she finished her sentence, she made a hand movement again, and Victoria was suddenly dressed in something even skimpier than the thing I'd just tried to needle the hippy chick with.

This time, when Binary's beam hit Glory Girl, it did hit skin, and Glory Girl keeled over as the man in the black cloak hit her with a quick one-two combo in the stomach. First breaking her forcefield, then immediately hitting again before she could get it back up. How had he known to do that? The only reason I knew about that weakness was because we'd basically stolen GG's forcefield.

Fuck that guy was terrifying.

As I was about to grab my visor and join the fight, I felt Amy's arm on my shoulder, holding me back.

"It's just some cash," she whispered.

True… but it felt kinda wrong. Then again, we had no idea who these people were, and observing them here meant figuring out what their powers were.

"Next time, can we just go in and grab the loot immediately?" the man asked. He had a South American accent that sounded absolutely horrifying, and for some reason reminded me of Glory Girl.

"Fine…" Binary replied, ticking on the cash register to force it open somehow, then taking all the cash out of it. "Next time, wear different pants so I can make them drop down," she said to the hiding sales girl. As she turned around to leave, she waved at us. "See ya! And remember, Binary and Inquisitor did this, post it online for free karma!"

Binary left first, and Inquisitor turned around just before going through the door, looking back at Glory Girl, who was trying to recover from the heavy punch to the gut. "You really suck at basketball don't you?" he told her.

As they left, Amy rushed towards Vicky, and I ran outside, trying to see where the duo was going.

Outside, a few of the private douchebags of the boardwalk stood back, obviously afraid of Inquisitor. So was I, but I had some experience being afraid of scary strong capes.

The two of them weren't heading away from the boardwalk however, instead walking towards one of the larger trees standing on the side of the road.

As they approached it, the wood split open at the top, creating a doorway into a suddenly hollowed-out tree. The two capes walked through the doorway, only barely fitting inside the tree trunk, which had suddenly gotten slightly wider to accept the two capes inside of it.

Binary waved in my direction, smiling, as the tree closed again, leaving the two of them inside.

Then, the tree suddenly started getting thinner again, returning to its original state. The only evidence of it having moved was a crack in the pavement around it.

I headed back inside the shop, checking on Amy and Victoria.

"Hey Amy" I whispered, making sure the sales-girl didn't hear us. "I think I found our tree-manipulator"

*** Binary ***

"So, that went well, right?" Leah asked her teammate, who had removed his head-cover as they walked through the underground tunnel, surrounded on all sides by sturdy roots.

"It only went well because we had actual opposition. Had it been the enforcers, they would've beaten us," he replied stoically. The man was thinking about something, his mind not entirely there.

"Relaaaax, they're just normal, not even highly paid normal. They'd crap their pants way before actually getting the balls to go up against us, and even if they tried to shoot us, it wouldn't work."

"If they tried to shoot you, and even then only if you were fast enough." He partner in crime said.

"Whatever, it worked, right? Anyway, couldn't you just have taken Boulder's beforehand? That would've worked right?" Leah asked him.

"Boulder was meditating, it doesn't work if he's meditating," he replied.

"To or from?" Leah asked him.

"From," he replied.

"Ahh, okay…" she replied.

She was still counting the cash they'd stolen. It wasn't much, they hadn't gotten to the safe, but it was still the money from three or four sales, and at the ridiculous prices the boutique asked, that meant a couple thousand at least. It wasn't the point, they were basically self-reliant down here, but cash in addition to rep was a nice bonus.

"You know, I was thinking about buying myself something neat from this" she told the grumpy man beside her.

"What, more jewellery?" he asked her sarcastically.

"Well, it's not like this shit is really real, I mean, it is, but not permanently…" Leah replied.

"Whatever…" Inquisitor said.

"What was that about basketball anyway?" she asked him.

"Something she was frustrated about, I think it was her, what's it called, trigger event?" he said.

"You see that shit? Internet said it's horrible, at least in the places where they don't pretend too much," she said. The internet here was weird, oddly controlled for a place with so many supervillains.

"For her, for the boss… I see shit with you and Holz but it's not as shocking, just, well, you know."

"Sure, whatevs…" she replied.

As they turned a corner, they came to the main door, an intricate wooden mechanism that was coded to their pheromones. It opened up as they approached it, and they entered the main room of their base. She spotted Birdman lying on one of the moss couches.

"Sup boss, you flyin?" she asked him.

"Have to keep in tune with the rhythm of the city, this way doesn't arouse suspicion," he replied. "How did the job go?"

"Perfect!" Leah replied. "Toby here got to punch a near-naked teenage girl!"

"You're the one that took her clothes!" Tobias, Inquisitor, replied.

"Details details! You're the one that got intimate with her, like, really intimate!" she yelled back. Needling the overly serious man was just too much fun.

"I take it you met Glory Girl, going by the aura?" the boss asked.

"Yeah, she wouldn't sign my notebook though." Leah replied. It still bothered her, how was she going to collect autographs if everyone was going to try and punch her? Why were all these capes so damn un-diplomatic?

*** Hebe ***

As we entered the wards HQ, I immediately spotted Carlos floating up from his chair, then straight towards us. Without saying a word, Carlos and Emma embraced each other and started exchanging large amounts of saliva while I walked on to the rest of the wards, or rather, Chris and Rachel. Vista and Dean were on patrol, and would arrive in five minutes or so.

"I wuv you cuddlypuff," Carlos told her.

"I wuv you more hunkypunky," Emma replied

"I'm going to romantically put my tongue up your earhole," Carlos replied.

"Okay but I'm saving my nose for after marriage," Emma replied.

"How about we just stay here like this all day and never get anything done," Carlos said.

"Okay, it's not like you're the team leader and we have a meeting right now, we can just keep kissing for like half an hour," Emma replied.

"Why are you pretending to be Emma and Carlos?" Rachel asked.

"I have to admit, the little sock puppets are a nice touch," Kid Win chimed in.

I suddenly got a lot less enthusiastic about the whole impromptu puppet-play.

A slipper, thrown by Emma, hit my back, which cheered me up again.

"You two almost done slobbering?" I asked them.

"We're not that bad, are we?" Carlos said, turning around, one hand around Emma's waist.

"You kind of are," Chris said. He was obviously still jealous, something I could understand.

"Anyway, let's get the whiteboards set up? Figure out who these people are?" Carlos said.

"Judas, whiteboard," Rachel said.

Judas, who had been running circles around Emma and Carlos wanting to get in on the whole _'_ _exchanging saliva'_ thing, ran for one of the whiteboards on wheels in the corner, and started pulling it towards the middle of the room.

I walked towards it, grabbing a marker, and wrote down the names. Binary, and Inquisitor, with an extra column marked only as tree-man.

"So, powers first," Aegis said.

Under Binary, I wrote down the words matter manipulation and pain ray. For Inquisitor, it was flight, strength, and the word Thinker with a question mark behind it.

"Thinker?" Emma asked.

"He knew how Vicky's power works, so I put it up there," I replied.

I felt the slight change in air movement that went with the movement of the elevator with the hairs on the back of my neck. Three seconds later, the door opened, showing Vista, Gallant and my father. I gave the marker to Emma and walked towards my dad. He hadn't shaven since the fight, still mourning the loss of Mouse Protector and Myrddin. I grabbed his hand, and he squeezed back.

Emma was working on the board, adding short descriptions about costume and personality, while Vista was sitting down next to Rachel, asking Judas to sit on her lap. Judas was kind of large for that, but did it anyway.

"You two all right?" Dean asked me. It hadn't been necessary, he already knew because he could see our emotions, but he still asked, which was really nice of him.

"Yeah, bit annoying that we couldn't do anything, but even Vicky wasn't really hurt." I replied.

"Good to hear," Dean said. Was it good because I didn't get hurt, or because his girlfriend didn't get hurt? If only they broke up…

"The tree thing, explain," my dad said.

"They disappeared into a tree that opened up for them, I think it's probably the guy that made everything connect to each other, not sure though." I replied.

"Hmmm. Could be Holzschwert, did you see anyone throw rocks around?" he asked.

"No, not that I could see," Emma replied.

"Hmm, means they either split up, The Boulder is staying back, which would be uncharacteristic for him, or this is a different wood-manipulation cape. Did you happen to spot any Swastikas or anything like that on their costumes?" he asked.

"Nope, Emma's mom said inquisitor sounded South American though."

"Does that mean we get to fight a Hitler clone?" Kid Win asked, which got a chuckle out of Armsmaster.

"I don't get it," Rachel said. Neither did I.

"It's a reference to Nazi refugees after WWII, Boys from Brazil, that sort of thing," my dad explained.

I still didn't get it, but whatever, if it cheered him up then that was good.

"What's matter manipulation mean?" Vista asked, pointing at the board.

"She changed Victoria's clothes, and she opened the cash register somehow. Also took of someone's belt from a distance."

"Sounds like something with some really weird characteristics to it. Write a detailed report and get it to analysis, they might be able to figure out how it works," My father said. "Was there security footage?"

"No," I replied. "I checked, and we got some stuff on Binary entering the store, but they turned off almost immediately after that. It was weird though, I couldn't find any evidence of hacking or anything. You think it was an inside job?" I asked.

"Maybe… but I have a hunch it's related to Binary's power. Anyway, I see they were relatively stable, didn't hurt anyone except Glory Girl?" he said.

"Yeah, she even waved to us when leaving, you think she knew our identities?" I asked.

"Probably not, they seem like capes that prefer to play according to the rules of the game. Feel free to go online and tell people about it. If people know what to expect from them, we'll have less unfortunate incidents. Don't want anyone pulling a gun and escalating minor robberies." My father said.

"You think Lung will be a problem here?" Aegis asked, still unsure in his role as team leader. He seemed perfectly willing to let Armsmaster lead the discussion.

"He doesn't lay claim to the boardwalk. Then again, he won't like it when figures out just how far that tree network spreads," Armsmaster said.

"In other words, we keep that one a secret," I supplied.

"Did Panacea have anything to add on that topic?" he asked me.

"Not really, she says it's too big and she gets headaches, too much information," I replied.

"I see... Well, this is a good start," he said to everyone in the room. Then, he turned to me. "You want to go work on the tent tonight? I found some files on a water filter we could use?" he asked.

"Sure dad, you go on ahead okay? I'll bring some food along." I replied.

"Chinese?" he asked.

"Fine, I'll get us Chinese…" I replied, pushing him back towards the elevator. "See you at six ok? Bye see ya later," I said while pushing the button for the ground floor and quickly dashing out before the elevator door closed.

I liked him, but it could be rather embarrassing in front of the team…

"So, tour coming by in half an hour, we have to look all serious, remember?" Aegis said, taking charge of everyone's attention. "Argenta, Vista, Gallant, I need you to help me change the layout of the base a bit. Hebe, go fix your hair and put on your costume, you and Rachel have patrol this afternoon," he said.

"I'll go get Maggie from upstairs," Rachel said. Maggie was a Labrador she took over from an arrested criminal yesterday. The PRT wanted to test and train with her first, but apparently Rachel thought she was ready for a patrol. Oh well, at least I was fast enough not to need a ride.

"You can pick him up just before you leave," Carlos said. Rachel started pouting, but I didn't see much more since I'd just entered the girl's shower room.

Curious, I put my ear to the door, only to hear Carlos say something I hadn't expected.

"So, now that she's gone, what are we going to do for Hebe's birthday?"


	65. Chapter 9,2

**Chapter 9.2**  
Patrol today was absolutely horrible, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it was warm, and the sun was shining down in its full glory. Second of all, it was a nice, calm day, and absolutely nothing horrible was happening, except for the Tourists gawking at the superheroes. Third, the surroundings were really distracting, what with all the shirtless guys running around playing volleyball or trying to surf. Fourth, Judas kept running around chasing sticks, getting wet half the time. Fifth, Rachel was complaining that the sand was getting into her boots. Not something I was having trouble with, I was wearing tinkertech sandals.

All in all, if any of the other wards was going to ask us how patrol was, we'd tell them that it had been absolutely horrible. I mean, the dangers of brain freeze alone, there was just too much ice-cream in the surrounding area, and we had to protect the brave citizens of Brockton Bay from getting under-cooled.

Also, I was pretty sure it was bad PR to say no to free ice-cream.

In the distance, I could see the forcefield around the rig shimmering in the sunlight, and I dimly wondered if it kept out stuff like UV-radiation. I sure as hell had modified my current outer shield to do so, at least partially. Showing up in public with visor-shaped white spots on my face wasn't really going to help protect my secret identity.

Judas emerged from the water, his meaty, bony exterior dripping with water, and an oversized tennis ball in his mouth. He walked forward, and walked towards Rachel.

"No," she said before Judas could do anything.

Judas, saddened by his master's comment, turned around, and walked towards me. Then, when he decided he was close enough, he started shaking off, dousing me, or rather, my inner forcefield, the one covering my skin, in a tremendous amount of water.

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Rachel laughing beneath her helmet. Judas was just sitting there, being satisfied with himself before rolling his ball to me, asking for a throw.

I ignored him, and tried to keep a smile on my face for the beach-going tourists, most of which had taken out their smartphones for a picture.

All in all, it had been a very serious and important patrol. Right up until the point that a car alarm went off, followed by a loud crash and a cloud of darkness appearing, over at the boardwalk.

Rachel reacted before I could, quickly jumping on Judas's back.

"Undersiders," she growled.

"Ehm, Console? Undersiders are here. What do we do?" I asked after a set of eye movements coded into my communication system. I'd been a ward for about two months now, but I hadn't gotten into a fight beyond one or two arrests of crazy Merchant dealers. Those had been easily dealt with by throwing a confoam grenade at them. This however, was something completely different. This was an actual confrontation, with actual supervillains.

Supervillains that, compared to Horn or Accord, were a bunch of C-listers. But that didn't matter, they were supervillains nonetheless.

"I'm going to need more information than that Hebe," the voice in my ear said. I recognized her as one of the people that were on console duty whenever they didn't have a Ward to do it for them.

"They're doing something at the boardwalk, can't see what, cause, you know, Grue."

"I see. We'll send reinforcements in your direction; try to keep your distance while observing their position," she said as I saw Rachel and Judas charging in.

"Ehhmmm, small problem there. Rachel just went in."

The woman sighed, trying to keep me from hearing it, but my systems automatically detected and amplified the sound anyway.

"Look, just… Try to make sure that both Hellhound and the civilians don't get hurt. Your priority is de-escalation, not catching criminals," she said.

I called forth two hook-shots, looked in the direction of the black mist, and got ready to launch myself at an angle that would give me a good view of the Boardwalk, and the location of the, well, probably the robbery.

"So, what if the best way to de-escalate is to catch the criminals?" I asked.

"Then that would be nice, but not required of you, understand?"

"Aye sir," I joked, aiming with my hook-shots, and letting the targeting suite in my visor tell me where I was aiming. I pulled with my fingers, and two hooks were launched at two separate buildings, attaching, and then pulling me forwards, launching me towards a point in between the two buildings.

From my position, flying above the boardwalk, I had a good view of what was happening. What was happening was that a large cloud of supernatural darkness was obscuring everything from view.

I materialized another hook-shot, and used it to quietly land on the roof of one of the buildings, one with a good view of things. From what I could see, one of the Undersiders, probably Trainwreck, had launched a car into a storefront in order to get through the glass. That would explain both the car alarm I'd heard, and the glass shards spread all over the street.

I also spotted Rachel and Judas, dashing into the mist. I knew that Rachel disliked the Undersiders. Not because of anything they'd done, but just because they kept evading her, never giving her a stand-up fight.

This, in the light of the existence massive superdogs, was completely reasonable. But Rachel didn't see it like that.

I took out another set of hook-shots, and traveled around the cloud of darkness.

From behind, I could see the set of backdoors that the stores had, which hadn't been covered by Grue's darkness yet. I recognized one of them in a fit of déjà vu. The only difference being that the last time I was here, I'd been the supervillain robbing a store. Going by the fact that I hadn't been robbing them in broad daylight, I suddenly felt a lot better about my own criminal career.

Then, given that Rachel was probably keeping them occupied out front, I grabbed a few foam grenades, and took away one of their possible escape routes by covering the back entrance.

Then, I made my way to the top of the building, and noticed that most of the darkness had receded.

In front of the store, Rachel was still sitting on Judas, and squaring off against Circus and Trainwreck, From what I could see, it was a stand-off. Trainwreck was trying to keep her from getting near Circus, who was launching gouts of flame. At the same time, Trainwreck was desperately trying to dodge Rachel's over-sized stun baton, which was really more like an extendable electrified lance. The problem was that, whenever Rachel was about to hit Trainwreck, Judas either missed a step, or she'd half-fumble the lance.

That probably meant Regent was inside, out of my sight. Which meant I couldn't take him down from here. On the other hand, it also meant that he couldn't see me.

I materialized a foam grenade, and cooked it in my hand.

One… two… three… and I dropped it on top of Trainwreck.

Trainwreck, however, had faster reflexes than I'd expected, and managed to jump to the side in time, leaving a car-sized puddle of foam behind him.

"Above us!" he yelled, and Circus turned around, spotting me. She leapt up the side of the building, climbing the side like real-life was a video-game. Good, as long as I kept her occupied, Rachel could handle Trainwreck and Regent.

I materialized a throwing net, and launched it at Circus, who materialized a long pole on which she caught it, throwing the net out of the way.

I'd almost forgotten I wasn't the only person in town with access to pocket dimensions.

Circus climbed on the roof, her outfit consisting of shitty patterns with shitty colours and shitty bells on it. She smiled at me through her shitty facepaint, and I responded by throwing a confoam grenade at her.

She caught it in her hands, and laughed. "Really, little girl? You thought that would work?" she said before putting the grenade in her own pocket dimension.

Or rather, trying to put the grenade in her own pocked dimension. Something happened in the interaction between her powers, and she didn't manage to pull it off. Instead, she just got a really shocked expression on her face, followed by an explosion of white foam all over her face.

"I actually didn't, but I guess it worked out anyway," I quipped back, before checking back in on Rachel.

She'd fallen off of Judas, and was now approaching Trainwreck from two sides, perhaps thinking that a two-pronged attacked couldn't be countered by Regent.

That, however, wasn't the problem. The problem was that I saw cracks appear in the pavement, close by the store, in a rough semi-circle. In addition to that, the city was moving. Or rather, the entire building was.

 _'_ _Glyph'_ , having seen how the fight went, had decided to bail, and take the loot with her. The loot being the entire store. That, well, that would be problematic. Among other thing, there would probably be people inside of the building. People who weren't supervillains.

I jumped down, two sticky confoams in hand, and threw them into the store as I landed. I wasn't sure if I hit anything, because my ankle twisted the moment I landed, and I dropped to the floor.

Regent…

Within seconds, I realized that I'd made a mistake, as Grue's darkness suddenly started enveloping me.

The thing is, when you hear darkness, you think you just won't be able to see. It wasn't like that, but worse. Sound was muted, and I couldn't even hear my own breathing, and the mist-like substance felt weird on top of my forcefields.

It was quickly followed by someone kicking me in the ribs, and probably hurting his leg. Luckily, it hadn't been a hard enough hit to break it.

As a counter, I materialized one of my newest Gadgets. An improved edition of my noise-making tool, that added sharp light to sound at frequencies similar to the cries of babies. It'd been designed for maximum annoyance, and it had been made sturdy, so that it would be difficult to destroy, even if the enemy went so far as to look at it.

Sure, it didn't do anything in the darkness, but I was pretty sure that Rune was going to have to be able to see if she wanted to steer the store around.

Officially, of course, Glyph and Rune were two completely different people. One of them was a Nazi and E88 member that had been in juvie, while the other was one of the two new faces the Undersiders had recruited. Unofficially, everyone knew they were the same person, they just couldn't prove it, and they didn't want to drive her into creating more collateral damage.

Luckily, something had made Grue stop kicking me, and I was able to quickly crawl my way to the outside of the inky haze, where I was promptly met by Trainwreck, who picked me up, and threw me into the sky. There were some negatives in being supernaturally light.

Luckily, Trainwreck hadn't fully expected my next trick.

While testing my power, I'd noticed one new problem. It couldn't absorb things that were too similar to what it already had. The classification itself was quite loose. A left-handed and right-handed version of something were different enough, but it meant I couldn't just stack infinite confoam grenades. Thus, the sticky grenades I'd used earlier. In addition to that, I was also working on a set that would automatically explode upon impact. Right now however, I'd dropped a half-failed project. A grenade that was about to explode early, that I'd dodged by blueprinting it.

When Trainwreck picked me up, I'd quickly materialized four of them, and didn't do anything to grab them.

Trainwreck, once again quick on his feet, jumped out of the way while I was still in mid-air, but his legs were caught in the foam explosion.

I didn't see what came next, as I suddenly found myself being caught out of the sky by Judas, who had jumped at me like I was an especially large stick.

Instead of biting down, he dropped me on the ground, and as I sat up, I saw Rachel running towards me.

I held up a hand in a friendly wave. "I'm alright."

She didn't believe me, and came even closer, checking that my forcefield was still intact. Behind her, I saw the store, and the rest of the surrounding street, covered in darkness again.

"They escaped…" she said, before even checking if they were still there.

I stood up, and it seemed like she'd been right. To confirm, I launched myself upwards real quick, and I saw that the darkness suddenly extended much further towards the docks.

"Well, at least they didn't fly off this time," I said.

Rachel just nodded.

It was about five minutes later that Dauntless arrived, and we could check the store. Dauntless's shield could destroy Grue's darkness, when it had long enough to work.

The first thing that we found was the bottom half of Trainwreck's armor. He'd obviously removed himself from the foam by leaving it behind. It wasn't as big a win as I'd hoped, especially since Trainwreck was the kind of Tinker that could easily create new ones, whereas for someone like my father, losing half his gear would be an actual loss.

"Up top, I foamed Circus," I told him.

"Foam doesn't work on Circus, she can use her power to absorb it," Dauntless replied.

"Well, mine does. She tried and failed, that's how I foamed her," I said.

"Very well," he replied, flying upwards, checking on my victim.

I turned to scraps Trainwreck had left behind. It probably wouldn't be as juicy as the stuff Leet had made, but I figured I should probably check it out anyway. Knowing how he worked wouldn't hurt, even if it was less than interesting.


	66. Chapter 9,2,5

**Note: this takes places somewhere halfway through 9.3, quick rewrite of the timeline.**

 **Chapter 9.2.5** **  
**  
In a way, my plan was kind of mean. I knew Emma and Missy had been planning for over a week now, the two of them figuring out how to go about holding a birthday party without my knowledge. Too bad for them, I was rated as a Tinker(Stranger/Mover/Shaker), and talking behind my back didn't really work if I had access to most of the things that happened in the Wards common room.

Sure, Chris disliked it, but I knew for a fact he'd created a program that would allow him easy access to wifi whenever he wanted it, so it wasn't like he was without guilt. The rest of them didn't know, and if I told them about it, they wouldn't understand it anyway.

Now that I thought about it, neither would Chris. He could barely build a blaster, let alone something totally sweet like what I'd been planning. It was all just a matter of mixing up the chemicals just right.

Containment foam, oh greatest of muses, was just about the best thing to ever appear on the face of the earth. It could block people's path, it could disable them, it could stop explosions and quell flames, and most important of all, I could make sure it would disappear in just a few hours. For most people, the problem was dissolving agent that was necessary when using foam. For me, i could just wait for a bit.

I chomped on another spoonful of cereal, feeling the sweet sugary goodness enter inside of me and bless me with it's might. Perhaps it was the oats inside, or the puddle of milk they'd been inside of, or perhaps it was simply the fact that they were about 80% sugar. Halfway through the bite, my father entered the living room, carrying a plain cardboard box, tapes shut on all sides, under one of his arms.

"Morning dad," I said, managing to get the words out even though my mouth was still half-filled with cereal. Mom would've disparaged me for it, but dad didn't care about stuff like that.

"Good morning," he replied, putting the package on the table, and opening up the kitchen cupboard for something to eat. Carlos and Chris liked to joke that all my dad ate was nutrient paste, but that wasn't entirely right. Sure, he grabbed a pre-measured handful of vitamin pills from a container, but he also had a fruity smoothie and a cup of coffee to wash them down with. Except for today, since he'd taken apart the coffee machine last night, after we'd watched one Star-Trek episode too many. Apparently, he'd decided that coffee machines that didn't respond to voice-commands were just not good enough.

Of course, when I told him that coffee machines that responded to voice commands were commonly called secretaries, he'd dropped his project and mumbled something about how Picard didn't need a secretary and neither did he.

Which was weird, because I'd always pegged him as a Kirk, which… Well, no, Kirk didn't fit either, he was too much of a womanizer. Sisko then? He certainly had the heavy weapons part of the job down, what with the new scythe he was working on.

"So, busy night?" I asked him. He'd probably thought he was being sneaky, but I'd noticed him leaving when I went to bed last night, probably to Tinker on something, or catch some criminals.

"Not really, the city was quiet," he replied.

"Oh, neat," I said, trying not to look at the package that was still on the table, instead focusing on my cereals. If I paid attention to it, it would only take longer until he would acknowledge it.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked.

"Mostly," I lied. To be honest, I'd only really noticed his absence because I'd woken up in the middle of the night, images of horned monsters running through halls of abandoned hospital equipment. It hadn't been a very consistent nightmare, but it'd been there nonetheless.

"So, about today…" my father said.

"What? It's a perfectly normal day isn't it?" I replied.

"You know… I was going to wait until you stopped pretending, but I have some reports to fill out, and you have patrol in an hour," he said. Right, patrol, of course. I mean, it wasn't like that patrol was planned in a just so that I'd be at the HQ right before it, where the girls had prepared my surprise party.

"Really? I have no idea what you're talking about," I said.

"Just… go ahead and open it," he said.

I looked at the present, wrapped in what looked to be a cardboard box, and materialized a box cutter. One that I'd acquired during my very first outing.

Within the box, was what looked like… miniature engine parts? A few other metal bits? Some paint cans? I had absolutely no idea what this was about.

"I was thinking… you're fifteen now, so you'll be able to start working on your learner's permit. And while I have my motorbike, the car is pretty much normal, so I thought we could work on it together? Improve it a bit?"

"And this stuff?" I asked.

"Parts for a smaller replica. I know your power works better with small things, so I thought you'd be able to get some practice in by working on a model first."

"Sounds cool," I replied, looking at what I now recognized as car parts. Briefly, I was reminded of my last car-related activity, back in Westlake when I was running from the queen. I'd completely fucked it up, and now that I thought about it, that might have had something to do with my power. Usually, I had some sort of semi-instinctive understanding of technology, but for some reason, the car had been too large, and I'd lost any inkling of how it was supposed to work. Taking a smaller replica though… Could I make it remote controlled? Modify the engine to work on electricity, then apply rotational force by removing engine symmetry? I could apply a payload to it, add a camera, get some sort scouting done with it? It was large enough for me to install some sort of mass-reduction device, and I could modify the wheels to get some extra grip so that it would be able to ride over walls, possibly even the ceiling. Of course, what I could do with it depended on its finished size… Then again, if I just got a mass-produced frame, and installed some modules in that, applying different tools for different situations? No, that sounded like something Chris would do, creating a system so inefficient that you might as well exchange the power source with a wall socket. No, I needed to be able to match the engine's output to the device located within, or I'd have to apply wires and switches and all manner of other devices that would just reduce efficiency to a ridiculous degree.

"I see you've got some ideas already?" my father asked, car keys in hand, and ready to leave.

"Just a few…" I said.

"Well, It'll still be there in the evening," he said, motioning for me to follow along.

"You mind dropping by at the base somewhere in the afternoon?" Colin said as I left the car, stepping out into the PRT garage.

"Why?" I asked.

"Dragon wanted to take some measurements for that dress she's making for you, and my specialized equipment is in my lab."

"Okay," I replied. Dragon, who was too agoraphobic to go herself, was living vicariously through others, and designing the dress I would be wearing to the Leviathan after-party. Which… probably wasn't the right name for it, but I wasn't quite sure how else to name it, so I'd just have to make sure to never mention it in public. I didn't want another meeting with the assholes in the PR department.

My father left the garage again, driving to the Protectorate HQ, probably to grab his motorcycle and drive a few rounds at a hundred miles an hour in the name of justice and serving the public.

I checked that my visor was in place, and made my way to through the PRT building. The trick here was timing. I'd prepared most of my plan yesterday, so all I'd have to do today was cut through a few of the alarms, and add the final agent, which would make sure that my little trick wouldn't create too much of a mess. Piggot would probably send someone to yell at me afterwards, but it'd be worth it. Plus, it worked as a proof of a concept, meaning it could later be applied throughout the entire building as an extra layer of protection.

Maneuvering past the different PRT drones, I made my way to the water installation, and took a final look through the small camera I'd installed.

The rest of the Wards was patiently waiting, hiding behind couches or whiteboards to make sure I wouldn't see them the moment I entered through the elevator door. I could even see some prepared streamers, and something that would pop out and cover me in confetti, or possibly even glitter. In other words, they perfectly deserved what I was going to do to them. I materialized a vial filled with one of the reagents, and placed it into the sprinkler system. Then, I set my timer. Five minutes, forty-seven seconds, if I calculated it correctly.

I made my way to the elevator, waited two minutes, and pressed the button. If everything went right, the light informing them that a guest was coming in would be followed almost immediately by my plot activating. Soundlessly, the elevator made its way down, and once it was there, it waited the required time until it had given the Wards inside the time they needed to put on their mask. Not that it was necessary this time, but procedure was procedure.

The elevator door opened, and I was greeted by the rest of the Brockton Bay Wards, covered in a thin, slowly expanding layer of containment foam.

"Really? I spend an hour preparing for my surprise birthday party, and you guys just play around in containment foam?"


	67. Chapter 9,3

**Gadget 9.3**

The fist came seemingly out of nowhere, and I only barely managed to dodge by jumping back. Then, while I was still trying to get my balance, my legs got sweeped out from under me, and I fell with my ass straight onto the mat.

"Seriously Sely? At least try to pay some sort of attention. Just because you dodged one hit doesn't mean I'm not going to follow up," Emma said.

"Well, unlike some people, I'm not good at all the punching stuff," I replied.

"Yet you go into an invisible melee with Grue."

"Didn't plan on doing that, he surprised me," I protested.

"You dropped down to street level for, like, no reason. Honestly, you should've expected it."

"Well, I managed to catch Circus didn't I? I mean, it was a win."

"Really? I mean, you do know that she'll be escapign in, like, ten minutes, right?"

"Why? she's captured right?"

"Because it's Circus. She probably escaped in the time we were training."

"So, like, at least three years? My butt hurts from all the falling."

"More like five minutes. Seriously, you suck."

"Well, at least I can Tinker, unlike some people," I complained.

"The worst part of that is, I'm not sure whether that was aimed at me, or Chris," Argenta said.

"Both? As in, people in general?" I replied.

Emma groaned, and held out her hand. I grabbed it, standing up again.

"You ready for round three?" she asked.

"Fine… but go easy on me okay?"

"Even easier?" she asked.

"Yes!" I replied.

"Okay… So, you come after me first, I'll just focus on countering you."

I put my feet in a wide, balanced stance, and held my hands out in front of me, making a fist like some sort of Kung Fu action star. I took care to put my thumbs on the outside of my fists, I'd made that mistake before, and got ready to fight Emma, who was standing still in the middle of the mat, her blonde hair done up in a tight bun. She was dressed in a tight combination of underwear and a top, the type you usually saw on female MMA fighters. In my opinion, it was completely unnecessary, but Emma had gotten really into the cape life, and that included being way too serious about training and training gear. Plus, apparently Carlos loved sparring with her, with all the skin-on-skin contact that that involved.

Sadly, I realized that I should've gotten Dean to do some sparring with. Then again, I'd need to make sure he broke up with Glory Girl first, and Victoria was actually kind of nice when you got to know her.

Problems, problems everywhere, and it didn't look like they were going anywhere. Within the next week, I'd have to go to Holland for a swanky party in a dress that was way too fancy, I'd have to put up with people celebrating my birthday, and I'd have to go over another of Chris's ridiculous pieces metal wreckage he pretended was tinkertech.

Oh, and I was supposed to be on TV in some boring show.

After that, however, I'd be going to Boston to hang out with Blasto, which was going to be pretty fucking cool.

On paper, I'd just be taking two weeks off with my dad, a nice vacation somewhere away from the city. Crime was down, what with Lung having taken control of most of the cities' underworld, and dad was going to Canada to hang out with his new girlfriend, Dragon. He'd ask me if I'd wanted to join them, but I was pretty sure what they were going to get up to, and I wasn't interested in being there while they bumped uglies.

"You know you're toing to have to actually attack me one of these days right?" Emma remarked.

Suddenly, I realized I was still on the mat, standing right in front of Emma, and not hitting her.

To surprise her, I dashed forward, and swung my fist towards her face.

Like it was nothing, she caught my fist with her own hand, and threw me past her.

However, I'd managed to hold on to her hand, and carry her with me to the ground.

It wasn't a perfectly plan, because she'd fallen on top of me and was now in complete control of the oncoming struggle, but hey, I managed to do something other than fail.

"You two alright?" Carlos suddenly said, as he entered the sparring room.

"Carlos!" Emma yelled, quickly standing up and running towards them. I used his appearance as a suitable distraction, and made my escape, sneaking into the showers before Emma could demand another round.

I really, really sucked at fighting, I realized. In fact, I wasn't quite sure how I had survived so far, although I could probably assume it to have been luck. I was okay as long as I kept at range, but the moment someone punched me, I had absolutely no idea what to do anymore. Clicking a button and aiming at someone was very different from actually hitting them. Plus, I was still rather small and relatively light, it wasn't like I had any body weight to throw around, and unlike Emma and Rachel, I wasn't completely ripped. My body type was a lot closer to Vista's, and she was two years younger than me.

Several minutes later, after showering, I passed by Aegis and Argenta, the two of them kissing in mid-air. Bunch of show-offs.

As I entered the HQ proper, I saw Kid Win sitting behind the console, giving people shitty advice or something like that.

"Sup Hebe, PR wants you," he said, ignoring me after delivering the message. I materialized my visor, tried to ignore the fact that he was probably playing games on his phone or something, stepped over a sleeping Judas, and made my way through the PRT building, towards the PR office.

PR and image were, for some reason, different departments, even though they did exactly the same thing. Namely, they annoyed you about not behaving properly, or dressing properly, or speaking properly, or getting nagged at properly.

The PR guy was a rather effeminate man, or as he called it, genderqueer.

The internet had informed me that that meant he was either a teenager with a blog, or was Native American with two spirit animals. I was pretty sure the internet lied to me.

"Good afternoon Hebe, how are you?" he asked, his perfectly manicured unibrow raised in greeting. He was one of those people that was able to move only a single eyebrow, but only by virtue of him having only one.

"Fine, tired," I replied.

"I hope you aren't too tired? You're on the morning show tomorrow."

"Coffee exists," I said.

"That it does," the man said. Once, he'd given me his name. I'd promptly forgotten it about ten minutes later. Or maybe his actual name was eyebrow dude.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" I asked, eyeing through his office. There were pictures of people that were either really professional models wearing completely ridiculous cape outfits, or androgynous family members without fashion sense.

"I just want to make sure you know what to expect tomorrow. Especially with your fight against the Undersiders yesterday."

"So, like, I'll just tell them I caught Circus right?" I asked.

"Not… exactly. You see, I just got informed that Circus managed to escape from our custody about half an hour ago, so it's better to de-emphasize her capture."

"Really? Really? I actually manage to catch someone and I'm not even allowed to talk about it?"

"In addition to that, try not to mention the fact that you got hurt. We wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea," Eyebrow continued.

"So… what am I allowed to talk about?" I asked him. It wasn't like I'd planned to tell anyone I sucked in a fight, but this was a bit much.

"Try to focus on the positive side of things. Fundraising, charity events, that sort of thing. Tell them about your team, and how great it is to have support and friends."

"Really? You think that there's people that won't see through something that stupid, like, immediately? I mean, come on, people aren't idiots. They know that stuff like cape fights exist. They'll want to know what that's like, they don't want to know about how much it sucks to share a workshop with Kid Win."

"You mean how great it is to work together with a fellow Tinker?" Unibrow exclaimed.

"No, because he doesn't count as a Tinker. He can barely do math! He has to do every single calculation on his computer! Or worse, he'll ask me for help! I mean, seriously, calculating wavelets isn't very hard and he overdesigns everything to such a stupid degree and-"

"Look, just… just try not to mention Circus okay? Talk about whatever you want to, answer the questions they ask you, just don't put the attention on our escapee," Unibrow said, sighing.

"Fine…" I replied. This was going to be so fucking boring.

***

"Aaand we're live!" The director yelled.

"Good morning Brockton Bay!" the news-reading person said. I wasn't quite sure how to describe him. He was the guy in charge of telling everyone all the important facts from behind his desk, after which the camera would move to the couch, where his co-presenters could then discuss everything. Those co-presenters included guests. In this case, that was me, some dude from the Dockworkers, and a political scientist from BBU.

The news itself was the same as always. International political bullshit that wasn't going to amount to anything because no-one was actually going to attack anyone. People protesting that the city wouldn't spend any money on the poor parts of the city, after which they'd go buy some drugs or join a gang, some local politics about the mayor spending a ridiculous sum on an old stolen relic.

I did not at all feel responsible for that last one, and it hadn't been my idea anyway.

Eventually, the discussion came to a point that was actually interesting.

"So Hebe, on a more local level, do you see any consequences of the current unrest in Asia?" one of the presenters, Alisha, asked me.

Alisha was, well, it was hard to describe. She looked like an actress that would've gotten typecast as the sassy black lady in every movie she was in, only she was really genuine and nice instead. Except the being genuine and nice was probably not genuine, because she was an actress and/or presenter of a morning tv-show.

"Not really. I mean, Lung is pretty much the only big villain in town, so the analysts are always keeping an eye on political stuff. But he's also really big on Asian unity, so if there's any trouble he'd try to keep it internal," I replied, trying to remember what exactly the reports had said.

"Professor Milthon, Hebe brings up an interesting point. What do you think about Lung's Pan-Asian ideology, in comparison to current conflicts in the region?"

The professor, a man that looked like he worked out almost as much as my dad, really did not look like a professor. No glasses, no beard, not even gray hear upon his head, although that might have been because he was bald. I didn't really pay attention to his answer, my mind was already moving to other things. I had some ideas for an electronic device that could work together with Emma's power in the case of a team-up. Maybe I could hijack the process by which she increased the fluidity of her metal? Her power made her strong, but it wasn't just raw physical force that made her able to tear and reshape metal.

The conversation moved on again, this time the man from the Dockworker's union was going on about a ferry which, apparently, had once gone across town regularly. I wondered why, because it wouldn't save all that much time to take a ferry instead of driving somewhere, but apparently it was a thing, and apparently lots of people thought it was important.

Eventually, the topic changed to something far more interesting, the upcoming party in Europe.

"So Hebe, I heard you were invited as well, any idea what you and your father will be wearing?"

"Not really," I replied. "Dad's new girlfriend has gotten really into designing clothes recently, so she's making a fancy dress for me, and I know Argenta and Panacea will be wearing some sort of dress as well. We'll still be wearing our masks, or something similar, so it'll be a masked party where everyone knows who everyone else is, because they're all wearing masks. As for my dad, he's working on a new set of armor with extra sensors built in, so I'm guessing he'll polish it up and wear that. Might even bring the Halberd. I mean, he even showers with it."

That last part was a lie. Dad wasn't really all that interested in his individual halberds, he had too many different ones to get interested in any specific weapon. But, I still owed him for the whole not telling me he's secretly a superhero thing, so this was fair payback.

Once I was done, the rest of the guests, the audience, and the presenters gave me a quick laugh, before asking for further info about the event. I answered their questions, trying to remain polite, thinking about how bad the PR dude had fucked me over. I mean, I'd thought he'd been lenient, that he'd thrown me a bone. But the entire 'you can't talk about anything' schtick was probably all just a cover so that I would accept not talking about Circus today, because they were all too incompetent to build a single prison that could hold people for, like, half a second.

You know, except for the one prison that was so bullshit secure that they couldn't let people out if they wanted to, which was problematic for all sorts of different reasons. What if someone was innocent? What if politics made sure that someone that didn't belong there got sent there? Just last week, Canary had gotten arrested for something with her powers she probably had no control over. I wasn't really into the whole acoustic ballad unplugged thing, but I knew Triumph would've been annoyed, and Battery was a fan as well.

And I couldn't really get too angry about someone capable of literally telling people to go fuck themselves. It sounded like it'd be kind of funny. You know, apart from the bleeding and the mutilation and stuff.

The rest of the entire tv-show was actually, well, rather boring.

The rest of the panel talked about local politics, I talked about my new Dauntless puppet, with glowing shield and lance. They talked about how amazing it was that America was a republic, I talked about how amazing it was that people just kept walking into my invisible containment foam. It was all rather back and forth.

"So, can you give us a demonstration?" one of the presenters asked.

"What? Of the invisible foam? I mean, it's not actually invisible you know, just see-through. If you pay some attention it's actually rather easy to figure it out. I mean, they never do, but if you were, like, a Thinker? You probably wouldn't fall for it. Then again, maybe you would because you'd think you'd never fall for anything so obvious." I replied, summoning a grenade. Or, as PR wanted me to call it, handheld projectile foam dispenser. It was totally a grenade though, except without all the shrapnel.

"Who do you want me to foam?" I asked.

For just a second, it was quiet, before about half the panel enthusiastically asked to be foamed. Luckily, I was able them all, simply by summoning three more grenades.

Then, all covered in foam, I gave them my last piece of information.

"Oh yeah, and uhmmm. Since it's different from the standard formulation, the counteragent doesn't actually work. So, yeah, you're going to be stuck here for a while."

The tv-show staff, now locked in see-through sticky goo, suddenly got a panicked look on their faces.

"Relax, It'll be completely gone in a few hours,"

***

I was never, ever, going to get used to the whole jet-lag thing. After several hours in a plane, you'd get out and it would be even more hours later, or earlier, depending on your perspective.

Point being, I was really tired while I wasn't supposed to be tired. It was weird and disconcerting, and I didn't like it. In addition to that, my tired head had to remain balanced on top of a set of heels, which remained ridiculously difficult. I was getting better at it, but that didn't really mean anything.

The dress though, was absolutely gorgeous. Made out of a material Dragon was using for optical camouflage, it was a beautiful sky blue thing. Only instead of being that all the time, it slowly changed colours every now and then. Sure, it was ridiculously overdesigned, but it was made by a Tinker, so it was normal for it to be bulletproof. Plus, it went well with my visor, and the heels help me look just a bit taller than I was, so that was nice.

The whole knighting ceremony itself though, wasn't as interesting as I'd expected it would be. Sure, there was a king involved, but he wasn't even using a sword to knight people, instead just slapping them on the shoulder. Plus, instead of getting platemail, a horse and a lance, the knights just got fancy medals. I wondered if Chevalier would be able to combine all the medals he'd gathered over the years into one supermedal that combined the best properties of all his medals. Probably, although I wasn't quite sure what that would mean.

Most of the people who had fought Leviathan had gotten a medal, some of them posthumously. Not everyone had gotten one though, for reasons I wasn't quite sure of. Something about them being villains and having a relatively low-level contribution. PHO had been arguing about it for weeks now, some of them arguing that the people that had been snubbed would attack the event, while others saying that it would be stupid to attack a place with that many capes. What I'd gotten out of it was that building a monument after the fact, although it was impersonal, wasn't that bad of a solution to the problem of what to do after the fight.

Some of the villains, not trusting the large amount of heroes present, hadn't shown up. Emma had said that she knew at least one of them was making an anti-colonial statement, and others just didn't want to be a knight, or something like that. Of the Brockton Bay scene, the only villain present was Lung, who was wearing some sort of traditional Asian garnment, sort of like a samurai but not quite. According to Dragon, it was some sort of political statement, probably having to do with his ideals of pan-Asian unity, which just about no-one outside of Brockton Bay shared with him. And even in B-Bay, it was mostly his tremendous power that enforced those ideals on the local Asian communities.

The king was rather hurried during the ceremony though. Something about there being a whole lot of people getting knighted, and not that many hours in the day. Plus, they probably wanted to get the boring part through with quickly. It was hard to keep a horde of parahumans entertained by making them wait in line for a medal and a knighthood.

After the first round of medals, it was time for the slightly less prestigious ones. The Netherlands had several orders of knighthood, including, apparently, a civilian one. This made absolutely no sense to me, but its existence meant I'd receive a knighthood as well.

The line for the civilian knighthoods was much shorter. I was there for my contributions to the Endbringer prediction algorithms. I got my hands on them after dad and Dragon had been working on them for a while, both annoyed that their best efforts just kept predicting another attack on Lyon, and I'd individualized them, predicting for specific Endbringers instead of all of them at the same time. Dragon had looked that over and changed some of it, and then dad had taken another look, after which I'd given it another pass and so forth, and eventually we'd predcited the attack about an hour before it happened.

Amy and a few other capes were there for their contributions as healers, and there were a few Thinkers as well, people who had offered their services in co-ordinating the battle with their parahuman abilities.

Amongst those Thinkers, was a cowardly murderer by the name of Accord, who had apparently tried to regain some of his influence and reputation by joining the fight. I wasn't sure if he recognized me, because he was too busy angrily looking at a young man with a hunch-back. To Accord's bigotted mind, physical deformity was probably just as grave a sin as taking a pen that wasn't entirely yours. Which meant he could go into a murderous rage any moment, which meant I'd have an excuse to avenge Rose. I'd just have to wait for the right opportunity.

I didn't really recognize most of the other Thinkers, although I did recognize a guy that could slow time around him, which he had apparently used to give the Thinkers more time to co-ordinate. There was an old man with long grey hair that could've just been a guy with a lot of experience, a middle-aged woman with black hair with a theme of duality in her costume, which probably meant she only gave yes/no answers, and a blonde teenager in a skintight purple outfit with immaculately cut hair, which stood in sharp contrast to her tired-looking eyes. Was she still suffering from the Thinker migraine she'd gotten from the fight? Or was it something else?

The ceremony itself was, even though it had seemed impossible, even less interesting than the one for the military order. Apparently, the Netherlandish (Dragon had told me the people were called the Dutch, but that just didn't make any sense) people prided themselves on keeping their ceremonies simple and to the point, which made me wonder why they even had it.

I received my medal and a thank you for helping, and then we were on to the party proper, spread throughout several different rooms containing dignitaries and dinner tables.

Unlike Argenta, who was standing next to Rachel, and Rachel, who was being talked to by the princess, I manged to make my way to one of the tables filled with refreshments, and got my hands on something I wasn't quite old enough for. Then again, this was Europe, and I was only two years underage instead of eleven. One year and a week to be exact. And hey, a single glass couldn't hurt right?

Dodging a question from Battery by telling her it was grape juice, I took a quick gulp, spit it right back out, and made my way towards the snacks instead.

Then, local delicacies in hand, I looked around, trying to figure out what everyone was doing.

Assault and Battery were on the dance-floor, Assault using his abilities to make it look like he was graceful, and Battery actually being graceful. I spotted Legend talking to a man in a suit with a simple domino mask on his face that was, going by the internet rumours, either his husband or his on-the-side boytoy. The boytoy specualtions were there mostly because of people that were hopeful that someday, they could be the boytoy. Alexandria, wearing a jet black dress with her tower thing on the front, seemed to be networking with people from all over the world, and Eidolon was doing what I was doing. Sitting in a corner, wholly uncomfortable with massive parties, and snacking while watching people. He wavved to me, and I waved back. I kind of liked him, I decided then and there. Sure, I'd never talked to him before, but no-one that awkward could be a bad person. More interesting, however, was that Lung was having an amicable talk with the king.

From what I'd heard, Lung had been a Brute, a brute, and a savage. Someone who dealed in sex, people and drugs, and who wasn't afraid to get rid of everyone that was in his way. Recently though, he'd been changing his tune. If you asked me it was because he didn't have any competition in the city, it was him, Coil, the Undersiders, and the new team of showy idiots that had robbed the clothing store we'd been in. But, not everyone agreed, and I had to admit that him actually talking to a king without turning into a giant rage monster was kind of strange.

Accord, ever the murderous asshole, was sipping what looked like a glass of wine, but could just as well have been the blood of unborn children. I wondered why he was standing alone, had he gotten rid of all of his minions? Had they gotten rid of him? Had they not been invited? Accord seemed selfish enough to only assist if there was no possible danger to him or his plans, so it made sense if his minions had been forbidden from fighting Leviathan.

"Hebe, right?" someone asked. I looked to my side, and saw a girl that looked more like a crazy cowboy than a cape.

"Yeah," I replied.

"The name's Hoyden, Austin Wards," she explained from behind a handkerchief.

"So, swanky party huh?" I said.

"Mehhh, fucking boring if you ask me," she replied.

"I know right? There must be like a hundred different capes here, and absolutely nothing is on fire."

"Yup… Counted at least six different pyromancers, yet somehow my middle school prom was more interesting," Hoyden said.

"What happened?" I asked. After all, I'd have to get her story before I could one-up her.

"I'm not sure. I mean, I'm pretty sure there wasn't any actual fire, but somehow all the fire alarms went off, ruined the entire thing, even the after-party the teachers had planned. Such a waste… especially when their alchol stash disappeared before they could re-plan."

"And what, they actually managed to get home that night?"

"Probably, I mean, why wouldn't they?"

"Because the principle's car was on the roof? And the rest somehow lost their car keys?" I replied.

"Now that, I gotta hear," Hoyden said.

"Well, turns out they don't always lock tractors, so someone that actually wasn't me managed to get some cable anda whole lot of traction. Plus, pretty low roof. Anyway, the rest of it was mostly just for equality's sake. I mean, the guy could've just hitched a ride with a colleague otherwise."

"I gotta say, I'm impressed. Except, you know, middle school. We're in the big league now," Hoyden said.

"How'd you find me anyway?" I replied.

"Oh come on, fake supervillain attack on a school, followed by a Tinker posting for advice on PHO? I know a fellow artist when I see one."

"So, you got a plan?" I asked her. This could be interesting. You know, as long as it didn't end up with people dying.

One hell of a swanky party though, I'd need to make sure it didn't come back to me. Then again, I was wearing one hell of a classy dress, so I'd probably be okay.

"Sort of, not entirely. I mean, the problem is the Thinkers."

"I know what Hunch can do, and I'm familiar with Accord. Not sure about the others," I replied.

"The guy with the vampire cloak, he's some sort of power interaction guru, as well as some other stuff I'm not sure about. The wizard-looking dude isn't an actual Thinker, but he can travel back in time, or get information from the future, or whatever. Thing is, it's only a couple seconds, and he's here to network, not to pay attention.

Then there's mister Atlas over there. He's like your Dauntless, he grows stronger over time, only he does it from training. He plays chess matches, he actually grows smarter, that sort of thing. Only I'm pretty sure he's never actually tried to think about parties like this, so we're probably safe there."

"What about blondy over there, you know anything about her?" I asked.

"Never seen her before," she replied.

"She's been hanging around awfully close to Accord, or the other way around, which is just fucked up in all sorts of ways. Anyway, I think she's a villain, and she's got a migraine, whatever her power is."

"So we're probably safe, as long as we don't directly go after her?" Hoyden asked.

"Probably… I mean, I have no idea what her power is, or what she's like," I replied.

"Let's stay out of her way then, and just try not to get caught. We should be able to do this. You know, as long as we act smart about it."

"Can you imagine the headlines though? I mean, the Arcadia thing was only fifth page or something like that."

"Pretty sure it'd reach the evening news," Hoyden said, her eyes smiling behind her kerchief.

"You know, unless it's gonna be a coverup," I replied.

"Which just means we get the conspiracy circuit going, which is probably even better," she said.

"Sounds good, we'll need to be subtle though."

"But not so subtle people can just call it up to bad luck."

"So… sprinklers?" I asked.

"Too much expensive art. Food poisoning?"

"Pretty sure they've got food tasters like in the movies. Fart sound-track over the intercom?"

"Too obvious, they'd connect it back to you even if you hadn't done it. Maybe we can smash some drinks on the floor and tell people that the cops are coming?"

"That'll get rid of all the villains, but I don't think the rest will buy it," I said. This was harder than I thought. We'd need to figure out something, and it needed to be subtle, it needed to interrupt the party, and it had to not end in bloody murder.

"How about we turn off the wifi?" Hoyden asked.

"What, and have everyone incur roaming charges? I mean, sure, it's devilishly annoying, but I don't think it'll actually reach the news," I said.

"True… Problem is, we're thinking too small and too big," Hoyden replied, pondering the issue.

"How about… Hmm… Maybe something power-related?" I said.

"I mean, sure… if you have any ideas. Because I don't"

"Yeah, me neither…"

We stood there for a while, our backs to a cocktail table with some snacks on it. The little princess was bothering her parents about getting a puppy, and Rachel had finally managed to get away from her. Now, she was sitting between Assault and Battery, using her adoptive parents as a shield that held out everyone that wanted to talk to her. Argenta was talking to, of all people, Alexandria. Or rather, Alexandria was talking to her. She was being really enthusiastic, even though Aegis was supposed to be the only Alexandria package for her. I guess you couldn't really beat the original after all.

I finally managed to spot Vista, who was being talked at by a girl that looked her age, but was actually a hellish monstrosity by the name of Bambina whose powers interfered with her aging, Miss Militia looked just about ready to intercede on her behalf, but knowing Missy, she'd be trying to keep up a strong front because she totally didn't need the help.

My father had moved on from his conversation with Chevvy, and was now talking to a Tinker from the Suits, who, for some reason, didn't wear suits.

"So, you girls having fun?" a voice I recognized said.

We both turned around, and I saw Chevalier there, a big smile visible beneath a swanky version of his helmet.

"Sure, yeah," Hoyden said. I wasn't sure if she really knew Edward, probably not. I mean, I knew him because my dad knew him, and somehow I figured Myrddin and Chevalier weren't best friends for some reason. Although Eidolon seemed to be pretty awkward, as was my dad, so who knew?

"Music's boring though," I said.

"This is supposed to be music?" he asked, trying to be funny. Okay, being funny, in his own way. He probably felt like he needed to compensate because my father was never going to crack silly jokes at me, so that task fell to him. "Anyway, I thought, here's two young Wards looking bored out of their minds, how about I tell them some stories about the good old days!"

He looked rather enthusiastic.

"Stories?" Hoyden asked.

"Ahhh, how about… Well, there was this one time on a cruise ship, we'd just rescued the president's daughter, so there was a big party, and long story short, turns out there's no such thing as a brown note, not even if you get Armsmaster to help you out."

"Wait, really?" Hoyden asked.

"I mean, not really, he was hanging out with this chick at the time so I'm pretty sure he didn't actually try all that hard," Chevalier replied.

Cruise ship, chick, Armsmaster. I was pretty sure I knew who he was talking about.

"So what the fuck happened?" Hoyden asked.

"The speakers blew out, the secret service freaked out, and Armsy got lucky," Chev replied, putting one hand on top of my head and messing up my hair in what I presume was supposed to be some sort of "favorite uncle" thing.

"Why don't you tell her about the time you completely failed at fishing," I interjected.

Hoyden was surprised, and Chevalier quickly changed topics.

"How about, instead, I tell you about the time me and two of my friends made everyone at a swanky European party think the palace was haunted?"


	68. Chapter 9,4

**Gadget 9.4**

I closed the door behind us, hoping no-one had seen us leave the party proper.

"So, what now?" Hoyden asked.

"Well, normally, I'd do this first," I replied, materializing a launcher, and shooting at a camera at the other end of the hallway. One of the advantages of being an official superhero and everything, meant that I actually had a place to practice my aim, so I actually hit my target in one shot this time.

"And what does that do?" she asked.

"Loops the previous couple of seconds, anyone looking at it the image will see absolutely nothing."

"Seems inefficient," Hoyden said. "Can't you make it turn to snow instead? Like, as if a ghost was messing with the electronics?"

"Ghosts do that?"

"I mean, duhhh? How else would you explain them never being caught on camera."

"By being invisible?"

"Point. Anyway, they don't know that. So, where do you need to go?"

"A sub-node to the security system, preferably. The guard room itself will be manned, and most people can't do much with a sub-node, so it won't be as secured."

"Sounds like a plan, smart girl," Hoyden said. "You got one of those guns for me?"

I handed her a freshly materialized launcher, and let her take point. She leaned against the wall, sneaking forwards towards the next corner, and snuck a glance around it, her body twisting in place to give her the optimal angle. She turned around and smiled at me, holding a finger to her lips, before taking aim, and shooting the next camera. Then, she held out her hand, motioning for me to wait, before eventually coming down from her tip-toes.

"Server and a moving camera, had to be quick," she said.

"You're pretty good at this," I replied.

"With a power like mine, you need to be if you want to sneak around," she said, a proud grin visible below her kerchief. "Anyway, I think there's some stairs further ahead."

"Should get us further from the majority of the mooks," I replied. "Good thinking."

"Got another one of those thingies?" she asked, and I handed her another one. "They're pretty useful."

"Gonna run out soon though," I replied. "I've got some other stuff, but it's less stealthy."

"Let's hope Chev's part of the plan is done by that point," she said. "Also, let's go silent."

I nodded, and followed behind her through the hallways. Around us, I could hear waiters and security personnel exchanging information, and in the distance I could hear the band play some aggressively inoffensive music.

Hoyden then took the a set of stairs, pulling me along through a narrow set of stairs, up towards the first floor. Once up there, we found the door locked.

"Hold on," Hoyden said, "I gotta pick this thing."

She bent forward, holding an ear to the lock while getting out a set of picks. Looking at the way she was working, I thought about the fact that my lockpicker would break through this thing in no time at all, but she looked satisfied with her skills, and I could probably keep them for later, if we were in a hurry.

"There, pretty cool huh?" she said, slowly pushing the door open.

"Pretty cool," I agreed. "Anything in this hallway?"

"Not that I could see," Hoyden said, "I think these are the living quarters."

"Still need to get into the system somehow… I don't think they'll have the security system in their bedrooms."

"I don't even know if they sleep here… They probably have a wholly separate palace for that. Anyway, let's see if we can find something interesting," she said, setting off in a random direction.

Walking the way she was, sneaking so nonchalantly, it didn't look like she was worried at all. Maybe that was her power, she was pretty sturdy, and didn't have to be afraid of anything the way I was. Although, she was wearing armor, with fine chainmail disguised to look like a stereotypical old-fashioned western outfit, with dark grey jeans and a jacket that was slightly too short over a padded shirt. Her blonde curls stuck out from the back of her head, passing past the kerchief she was using as a mask. It had a golden shine to it, and an untidy look to it that had probably taken her quite a while to get just right. The way she walked, swaying her hips from side to side ever so slightly, reminded me of my mother, which wasn't really something I wanted to think about right now.

I rushed after her, keeping an eye out for security systems, or access to the electric network. On one hand, this place was old, and not designed with electricity in mind, so it would be difficult to estimate where the cabling would have been placed. On the other hand, it would possibly be rather visible when I actually found it, tucked away behind something that wasn't originally in the building.

"Found it," Hoyden said, pointing at a plain-looking door with a small lightning bolt on it.

"Not exactly what we were looking for, but it'll work," I replied.

"So, what exactly is the plan? I kind of zoned out during the tinker-talk."

"Chev's going to use his power on the lights, mess with them somehow, creating some sort of flickering static. I'm going to use that as a baseline to identify the specifics of the electrical system, then replicate it, and turn it up to eleven."

"You lost me at baseline sweetie," Hoyden smiled. "So, we gotta be in there when Chevalier does his thing right?"

"Basically yes," I explained, and we started making our way towards the closet. There weren't any cameras on it, so we managed to get there without any problems.

"Mind if I take this one?" I asked, materializing my own set of lockpicks.

"My pleasure," Hoyden said. "I'll stand guard."

I bend forward, placing the set of picks into the lock, and getting a good look at what I was doing. I inserted my tools, and went to work.

On one hand, I hadn't done this stuff in quite a while. After all, the lockpicker had been just about the first thing I'd ever made. On the other hand, it had been the first thing I made, because it was something I actually knew something about, and the blueprint in the back of my head supplied me with a handy cheat sheet containing everything I needed to know to properly pick this lock.

Slide in the tension wrench, insert the pick, apply some torque, it was as easy as I remembered it being, although that might have been the specific lock here. Still, doing this by hand with traditional tools was a bit inefficient. Then again, creating specialized tools wasn't really necessary since I already had an automated device that could do the job.

My pick put the final bit in place, I applied the necessary torsion, and the lock popped open, the door going with it.

"Nice," Hoyden said, and as I turned back around, I saw her looking at me, instead of at the hallway. "Easy peasy, didn't even have to use my power," I replied. Opening the door, and looking at the contents.

Behind the door was an extensive array of wires, set just a bit into the wall. It also included a switchboard, and what looked like it was a wifi connection port, as well as a few data cables that must have been connected to the security.

"Bingo" I exclaimed.

"Well, let's get to work shall we?" Hoyden said.

I grabbed my tools, summoned a few devices I'd already made, and started rewiring what I needed. It was messy and annoying, but my earlier device was relatively close to what I'd be doing right now, so it wouldn't be too difficult.

"So, how long's this going to take?" Hoyden asked.

"Fifteen minutes or so? Not much longer," I replied.

"Well, guess I'm on lookout. You have a tranquilizer gun or something?"

"Dad won't let me get into wet-ware right now," I replied. "Even though I could totally build something for that. I made disinfectant with Baking Soda, Coke, Wine and kitchen cleaner once."

"Well, that sucks. Guess we'll just hope for the best," Hoyden said, an overacted look of disappointment on her face.

Ten minutes later, I flipped the last miniature switch, connected a wire, and had my device ready for Chevalier's electrical interference. "Done," I said.

"Already? Damn girl, you're fucking amazing!" Hoyden exclaimed.

"Thing is, I already have an even better idea. I can get into the wifi, mess with the signals, and sent people some creepy messages."

"Creepy messages?"

"Or, I dunno, weird static or something. I can hijack the autoconnect thingy to show weird stuff on most models. Should be able to anyway."

"Sounds awesome," Hoyden said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Something with the flying Dutchman maybe?"

"I don't know… I mean, that sounds like the type of thing where everyone but the Dutch call it a Dutch thing. Like, I haven't seen the king walking around in clogs."

"Well yeah, but that doesn't matter, as long as most of the guests think it's a Dutch thing!"

"Good point," I admitted, and Hoyden smiled as I did so. She had a good smile, one that started at her mouth, but then spread through her entire body.

"Wait, do you hear that?" she suddenly asked.

"Hear what?" I replied, but before I could start paying attention, Hoyden pushed the both of us into the utility closet, closing the door behind us.

"Hey, what the-"

"Shhhh," Hoyden said, and I could hear what he had heard, approaching footsteps, in the hallway just outside, and what seemed to be a conversation. I tried to listen to it, but the closet was too small for one person, and Hoyden's body was pressed against mine in several places. Worse, I couldn't even see her, because of how dark it was. I did, however, notice her breath, both from the sound of it, and the feeling of warm air brushing against my neck.

The footsteps came closer, and I tried not to make a sound, which only made Hoyden's presence all the more distracting. It kind of reminded me of her mother, how she'd press herself against dudes when she was trying to put on the charm. Which didn't really apply here, because we were hiding from someone, and it wasn't like Hoyden and I were into each other.

As the footsteps passed us by, I felt Hoyden hold in her breath, while two people were talking to each other in what must have been Dutch. They seemed to be discussing rather heavily, and it took a while until I realized one of the voices was Accord. Because of course he would speak Dutch, and of course he would be here. The real question, then, was who he was speaking to. The king? Some sort of government official? Who knew, I sure as hell didn't, and I wasn't in a position to look through the keyhole. I should've known that Accord wouldn't be here just to get a medal and a knighthood, he was hobnobbing with the tallest people on the planet, hoping to steal some of their length.

Eventually, the walking pair was past us, and Hoyden started breathing again.

I moved my arm slightly, finding the keyhole, materialized a lockpicker, and broke open the door again. Once the door opened, the two of us fell out into the hallway. Luckily for me, Hoyden broke my fall, and her brute power probably stopped it from hurting her too much.

"You alright?" I asked Hoyden as I stood up again.

"Sure, that was exciting!" she said cheerfully, her face red from the tension of the moment.

"Good," I said, turning back towards the closet. I still needed to finish my fix of the wi-fi, before our plan activated.

Five minutes later, I was done, and I activated my little modification, sending strange notifications to everyone's phone. Stuff about ancient vengeance and planetary energies, that sort of things. Apparently, Chevalier had noticed everyone suddenly watching their phones, because he did something that must have been his ability, which caused the lights in the entire building to flicker momentarily.

From what he'd told me, he'd merge two wires of AC current together somehow, which led to weird, and useless, effects, that were just kind of creepy.

However, my system scanner was able to then pick up on that weird bit of power interference, and using that data, I was able to re-send the signal, only moreso. I looked at the tiny device, found the correct sequence, and pressed the right sequence of keys to re-distribute it throughout the network. Above us, the lights started flickering even more, giving everything an eerie look to it.

"So, how are we going to make this even more spookie?" Hoyden asked.

"I dunno? Rain and spooky thunder? That seems like a thing that would work?" I replied.

"Could be," Hoyden said. "But I have a better idea."

"What's that?" I asked, curiously.

"What with the lights malfunctioning, they'll probably move the entire party outside, with a big honking generator supplying some large spotlights or something."

"And you want to double-up?" I asked.

"Exactly" Hoyden replied, another grin on her face.

"How do we get to them though? I mean, I presume they'll be guarding them?"

"Not if they're high up," Hoyden said. "So, we'll get to the roof, see if we can figure out where to go from there."

"Sounds like a plan," I replied. "Any idea on how to get there?"

"Same way we got up here? I guess?"

***

As Hoyden was standing at another corner, waiting until the coast was clear, I took another good look at her. Playful blue eyes partially hidden behind a kerchief, a smile that could make even my father laugh, a cocky attitude that was perfectly visible in her body language. For the party, she'd made a few small changes to her normal costume. It still looked like something an old-west gold-digger or cowboy would wear, but the jeans looked new, the chainmail on it polished, and her jacket, while ostensibly looking like leather armor, was actually rather thin and loose, slightly resembling something you could see in a fashion show. Her midriff was just barely visible, flashing in and out of view while she was moving. From what I could see, her abs were like a washboard, and her arms had similar amounts of definition to them. While Emma had gotten fit during her time in the Wards, Hoyden had gotten ripped. Or rather, she'd gotten a lower level of body fat, which made her musculature more visible.

If I compared the two of them to myself… I was pretty happy I was a Tinker, and not one of the type that went into the melee. I really wasn't the type for physical combat, and rather preferred running away and dropping some grenades.

"Enjoying the view?" Hoyden asked.

"Huh… oh, I was just thinking of stuff," I replied.

"Anyway, coast is clear, you ready?" she asked.

"Sure", I replied, as we made our way through the flickering hallway. On one hand, it was kind of sad that I couldn't see my handiwork this time. The constant flickering here had made the hallways into half of a disco, and the panic downstairs would've been amazing. I'd have to make do with news reports this time.

We made our way through the hallway, Hoyden taking down another camera with my last looper, and found the door to the balcony. It was locked, but this time, I used my lockpicker to make quick work of that barrier.

"Pretty cool thingy, why didn't you use it earlier?" she asked.

"Limited supply," I replied. "Better to save them for when they're necessary."

"Pretty smart for a gearhead," she said.

"How's that even make sense?" I asked.

"I just wanted an excuse to call you smart," Hoyden replied, giving me another smile.

I grinned. "Thanks," I replied. "So, balcony," I continued, swinging open the double doors, and stepping forwards.

"Damn, good view from here," Hoyden said. I looked out, lights of cities and town in the distance, a long line of yellow lamps showing me one of the highways. It was a pretty good view, I had to admit that.

Hoyden closed the doors behind her, and joined me at the railing. She placed her hand on it right next to mine, and looked at me.

"Pretty cool huh?" she said.

"Yeah," I agreed.

Below us, the band had moved outside, and restarted the music like nothing was happening. I looked back, and noticed that we were still standing in front of two glass doors.

"Say, shouldn't we be sitting on top of the roof instead?" I asked.

Hoyden looked at me, then at the door, then back at me. "Sounds like a plan," she smiled.

I materialized a pair of hookshots, and handed one of them to her.

"Take this, It'll take off some of the weight," I said. Sure, it wouldn't work as well as it should've without the mass-reduction, but it'd help in climbing.

"How's it work?" she asked.

"Like this," I replied, taking aim at the top of the roof. The hook shot out, and pulled me forwards, allowing me to navigate the sloped roof of the old building. Behind me, Hoyden mimicked me, climbing to the top of the roof. I managed to get a seat on the highest part of the building, then held out a hand to help Hoyden climb up. She took it, before taking her seat right next to me, still holding my hand.

"Pretty cool," she said. "This how you get around?"

"Usually," I replied.

"Gotta say, you're better at this than I expected," she said. "We actually managed to get all the way to the roof."

"Not too hard," I said. "Would've been easier to go straight here though."

"And lose out on all the fun we had?" she asked, still smiling.

I looked at her, strangely conscious of the fact that she was still holding my hand. Had she forgotten to let go of it? It would've been awkward to ask about it.

It was weird, but I was really starting to like her. This entire outing was exciting, and despite not having an applicable power, she'd managed to hold her own. Not to mention the way she'd saved us when we'd almost gotten caught, pushing the both of us in the closet.

"It's so flat," Hoyden said, looking out over the landscape, but my eyes wandered back to her instead.

It was weird, looking at her… I couldn't help but think that she was awfully pretty, except that everyone I knew about being pretty told me she wasn't. If I compared her to Emma, or my mother, then she didn't fit in. In fact, she was kind of blunt, rather than ladylike. She wore her costume, not some expensive dress like I was wearing.

I thought back to my last meeting with Paige, the queen of Westlake. We'd talked about names, about growing up, and about boys. My Hercules, or Herakles, she'd asked about. I'd answered Gallant back then, and it wasn't like that wasn't true. I liked Dean. He was cute, he was kind, and he was dating Victoria Dallon. He'd also been the kind of guy my mother would approve of, not in the least because he was rich.

Was that what was going on? Was I looking at Hoyden this way because my mother wouldn't approve of her? Because for all her different boyfriends, they'd all been boyfriends?

"So, about those lights," I said. "What's the plan?"

"Right, the plan," Hoyden said, looking down at the party, which had shifted to the garden, which was lit by small lamps everywhere. They'd probably set it up in advance so that people could walk outside for some privacy, which meant it had been easy to move the entire party. It looked kind of romantic. I could see my dad, talking on the phone with someone, probably Dragon, and Chevalier was talking to Miss Militia on a small bench off to the side of the main area. Legend was talking to his masked husband, and I spotted Emma and Carlos on the dance-patch-of-grass, slow-dancing together.

Looking over the rest of the guests, I saw Amy talking to an Asian-looking Ward I didn't recognize in a purple dress with an arrow-like pattern on it. I could also see the girl that had been with Accord, sleeping on a little bench in the corner somewhere. One of Rachel's dogs was playing with the little princess under the watchful eyes of several people in threatening looking suits, and Rachel herself was still hiding between the weird couple that was Assault and Battery.

"I mean, the best plan would be to, like, make shadow figures or something appear that would freak people out. Like how you can do with an old-school projector?" I suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," Hoyden said. "Think we can reach that lamp there from up here?"

She pointed at a light set up above a few bushes, that lit up most of the dancefloor at a distance. It was close enough to the edge of the roof that we would be able to reach it by moving over the roof.

"Probably," I replied, letting go of her hand. "Gotta be careful not to fall though."

"We should be fine," she said. "C'mon, let's go."

I crawled forwards, over the top of the roof, until we reached the part where we were right in front of the lamp. Then, I slowly dropped down, making my way down the tiling without falling down. It helped that it was dry up here, so it wasn't too slippery.

After a minute of carefully taking it a step at a time, I managed to reach the overhang of the roof, where it almost touched the light's casing. I let my power loose, and started wondering what I could do with the lamp, when I was interrupted by a noise from above.

"Hebe, watch out," Hoyden said, and as I looked back around, I saw that she'd been less careful in the climb, and was sliding down the edge of the roof.

I tried to jump to the side, but it was too late, as she crashed into me, and send us both over the edge.

Falling down three floors was a bad idea, so I immediately tried to get out a hookshot to break my fall, but Hoyden had a different idea. She wrapped herself around me, and maneuvered herself around in mid-air so that she hit the ground first.

Together, we crashed into the bushes beneath the light. Hoyden's power and armor keeping her safe, while she kept me from harm.

Someone, however, had noticed the sound of us falling down. We were hidden between the bushes right now, but I could hear two people saying something in a language that wasn't English. "Hoorde jij dat ook?", and from the sound of it, they were walking towards us.

This was bad. If they caught us, if they figured out that we'd been causing mayhem while a truce was in effect…

The voices started coming closer, and I thought about my options. Could we run from it? Trick them into thinking we were someone else? Take them out of commission before they saw us? As the voices came closer, I started panicking. None of the plans I'd thought of were remotely workable, and it would be only seconds until they reached us, and caught us.

However, instead of panicking, Hoyden did something else. Her right hand reached up to my face, then went to the back of my head, and grabbed hold of my hair there. Her left hand wrapped around my waist, and she pulled my body against hers while she pressed her lips against mine. Trusting that she had some sort of plan, I stopped myself from going stiff, and when her tongue came into play, I slightly opened my mouth, giving her some room.

"Hey, you there," someone said, and I heard the bush we were in rustling, but Hoyden ignored it, and took the opportunity to shift my head into an angle, pulling me deeper into the kiss.

Right, gotta play along, I thought, and I brushed my tongue against hers. Not because it was romantic, or because it felt good. Just because we had to sell this, or we'd be sent to the birdcage.

That was the only reason I was kissing her right now.

"Ugh… teenagers," one of the voices said.

"Look girls, if you want some privacy, there's plenty of empty benches, but this place is off-limits to guests," the other said.

Hoyden ended the kiss, placing my head in a resting position upon her shoulder, and looked at the man, a rather dangerous looking individual in a uniform.

"I'm sorry sir, it's just, it was so busy, and we didn't want to end up all over the internet," she said.

"It's alright miss, just promise me you'll stay behind the barriers next time," he replied, exasperated.

In return, Hoyden stood up, pulling me with her, and we made our way back to the party, her arm still wrapped around my waist. Mission accomplished. 


	69. Chapter 9,5

**A/N: I accidentally forgot to update with chapter 9.5 on , which made the next chapter appear out of nowhere. My apologies for that, and here is chapter 9.5 as well.**

 **Gadget 9.5**

"Well, we made it out," Hoyden said, as we rejoined the party proper. I hadn't been able to do anything to the outdoor lights, but that was only a small setback.

"Yeah, just barely," I replied.

"Anyway, that was pretty fun. Bit low on explosions for my tastes, but still exciting."

"Yeah," I replied, conscious of the fact that she still had her arm around me, still making sure the guards believed our story. "That was… exhilarating."

I wasn't quite sure if I was referring to our romp through the palace, or the way she'd kissed me. Then again, it wasn't like there had been anything to the kiss, it had just been a quick ploy to mislead the guards. Besides, I was pretty sure I was into guys, the only reason I would fall for Hoyden was because my mother would disapprove, and she wasn't in a condition where she could judge me one way or the other.

"So… why do you think Chevalier wanted a distraction?" Hoyden asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, a guy like that, he wouldn't do it for no reason, not in a place like this. So, someone needed a distraction for something, right?"

"Good point… Maybe he, or someone else, wanted to talk to someone without interference? A good moment to slip out for someone with a lot of eyes on them?" I suggested. Intrigue wasn't my best field, although I was quite good at the whole distractions thing.

"You mean like those two people walking by us? When we were in the closet together?" Hoyden said, grinning to herself.

"One of those was Accord, I think. So, probably not them, but something similar? Maybe Alexandria needed to discuss something with someone? I honestly don't really know."

"Same," Hoyden said. "Anyway, let's sit down for a bit, you've got some sticks and leaves in your hair."

She sat down on a bench under a tree, next to a small pond. A few ducks were swimming around, strangely comfortable with the large amount of people around. I sat down next to her, and tried to fix my hair with a materialized brush while Hoyden was wiping dirt from her outfit.

"Here, let me," she eventually said, taking the comb from my hands.

"Thanks, don't really have a mirror here," I replied. Mirrors, that would be a useful thing to put in my inventory. Should I just grab one from a store? Or build one myself? Make sure it was maximally reflective at the right wavelengths? Or I could make it foldable, just have a small sheet that I could unfold and quickly turn into a massive mirror. What to use it for though… Unless an enemy had lasers, it wouldn't be very useful in a fight unless I could shine light directly into their eyes. Maybe I could use a self-aiming mirror that reflected light directly from the sun into their eyes? But… that probably wouldn't get through all the PRT controls, given that it would probably really hurt someone's eyes.

Hoyden was methodically pulling the brush through my hair, untangling everything that had gotten messed up from all the excitement. Looking down, my dress had made it through everything perfectly well, which probably had something to do with the tinkertech materials Dragon had used for it. She knew me, and she'd probably expected that I would get into some sort of trouble while wearing it, so it was both sturdy, and didn't really carry dirt or anything like that all that well.

"How did you get your hair like this?" Hoyden asked. "It's amazing."

I felt my cheeks redden, which was weird, because it wasn't like my hair was my work. Well, the dye was, but the rest of it wasn't.

"There's a… woman from my hometown. Pretty versatile Shaker. She's in the asylum right now, but I'm one of the people allowed to visit her. She's… nice, but kind of scary too. Anyway, she likes brushing people's hair, it calms her down and gives her something to do. Thing is, she starts using her power while doing that, which makes it longer."

"She's not Manton-limited?" Hoyden asked. "Sounds like bullshit."

"Not really," I said. "It's just that hair counts as dead stuff for her. Anyway, she keeps making my hair longer for some reason, and it doesn't really go through wear and tear or stuff like that like it normally would. Last time I went, I kind of fell asleep halfway through our meeting, when I woke up, I looked like Rapunzel, which is not quite as fun as it sounds."

"Stepping on your own hair?" she asked.

"Among other things."

"And the colors?" she asked, referring to the obviously unnatural deep blue of my hair, highlighted with streaks of red and white. I wasn't quite sure whether that was a nod to the American flag, or the Dutch one, but it didn't really matter anyway.

"Short-term hair dye. I make it myself. Had to mix up a special batch for today, given that it had to last for longer than a few hours."

"So, normally you just have it disappear all of a sudden?" Hoyden asked.

"Basically yeah," I replied. "Same with most of my shit."

"Sounds cool," she said. "You ever do some cool shit with that?"

"Not really… I mean, I messed with some sort of alternate dimension travel power guy that was invisible, managed to materialize something inside of his invisible semi-existent body, but I've never used the disappearing part of it for something, except for the part where I can just leave stuff behind and no-one will find it."

"Sounds convenient. So, if you, like, had some gum?"

"I could spit it out and not be littering," I replied.

"Sweeeet," she said. "What about if you swallow it?"

"Mild discomfort," I said. "But it's Manton limited, stops disappearing if it's part of a living thing, but only partially. So, you won't get hurt, but you can't really eat my stuff either."

"Huh, cool. I just explode stuff."

"Explosions are cool though… Wish I was allowed to use them."

"You're not?" she asked.

"Nope… I'm not allowed to have real grenades, just the special nonlethal stuff,"

"That's too bad," she said. "Anyway, I'm done here, mind helping me out?"

"Sure, turn around," I said, turning back to her. She swung around, and I managed to pick some leaves and twigs from the back of her costume, although given how long she'd been busy helping me out, it seemed like I'd been in a worse condition than she was.

"There, done," I said, and she turned around, smiling.

"So, you want to get back to the party proper, get our hands on some grub?" she asked.

"Sure, sounds good," I replied.

We made our way back to the party, maneuvering between the different guests, most of them in one costume or the other.

"Hebe, wait up!" Emma, no, wait, secret identities. Argenta, called out.

"Hi Argenta," I replied. "This is Hoyden."

"Hello," Hoyden said, a bit less friendly than a minute ago.

"Where have you been? Hellhound was looking for you."

"We were hanging out," I explained. "What's Rachel want?"

"Something about asking your dad when we're going home. She said she's really tired."

"You're flying back today?" Hoyden asked. "We're staying for the night. The boss is going to teleport us all back in the morning."

"Dragon's picking us up with a transport," I said. "Anyway, I gotta go talk to Rachel real quick, see you in a bit?" I asked.

"Sure," Hoyden said. "Don't leave without saying bye!"

*** Hoyden ***

Great, another boring fucking party, Hoyden thought, looking around the room. A bunch of self-important idiots and diplomats trying to curry the favor of a wide array of capes.

She looked around the large room. Boring, boring boring boring. Eventually, her eye fell on a girl standing to the side, looking just as bored as she was. She wore a sleeveless light-blue dress, starting with some lace-like frills at the collar, and ending at her knees. Added to it were opera gloves and stockings stopping just below the end of her dress in silver. Given the hair color -deep blue, with streaks of red and white in it- this was most likely to be Hebe, one of the new Wards from Brockton Bay, and more importantly, Armsmaster's daughter. She still remembered how the big boss, Eidolon, had reacted upon hearing the news. Sadly, Eidolon's mask meant he couldn't lunch with the rest of them, but had he been drinking something at the time, it probably would've led to a spit-take.

She looked around, spotting the people she recognized at the party. Strapping Lad and Young Buck were both talking to a local teenager. Young Buck because he seemed to like the girl, Strapping Lad because he was so far in the closet he wanted to compete whenever a girl came by. The big boss himself was standing in a corner somewhere, nursing a drink, and knowing the guy, some sort of alcohol-related power. Perhaps something to detox quickly, or a regenerative effect that allowed him to empty bottles.

Boring, all boring. Worse, this was a rather important event, with a lot of big-shots- powered big-shots- around. Thus, it wouldn't really do to start something here. A few days of graveyard shifts wasn't too bad, but right here, it would probably be a few months of shit-shoveling duty, or even being moved to one of the quarantine zones.

So yeah, fuck that shit. Probably not a good idea, even if there were a few faces here just begging for a cake right in the middle. Or, well, they were actually begging for explosive punches, but that would've been an even worse idea.

Her eyes went back to the girl. The outfit said elegant young lady, but her reputation, expression and hair said rebellious punk. The combination of which was rather strange, and quite attractive.

"Don't leave without saying bye!" Hoyden said, smiling as Hebe turned around, looking for her teammate. Then, she turned to Argenta. The blonde bombshell was wearing a classic prom-queen type dress, as well as an elegant, unarmored version of her normal helmet. What, exactly, was this girl's relation to Hebe? Hoyden thought. Had she misjudged, had Hebe already been taken? On one hand, trying to get someone to cheat wasn't exactly a nice thing to do. On the other, it wasn't like Hebe had said anything about this girl.

The other option, of course, was that Argenta was interested, but Hebe wasn't. Or rather, that Argenta hadn't penetrated Hebe's shell of innocence yet.

"What are you smiling about?" Argenta asked.

"What? A girl can't have fun at a party with a friend?" Hoyden replied, needling the other girl.

She felt the blonde's eyes scan her, and tried to remember who Argenta was. She sure as hell didn't recognize the girl in front of her but…

Ahh, yes, the suit of armor floating around, smashing stranded boats into Leviathan's face. Lucky Hoyden, her rival in love was one of those people PHO praised into the heavens as being a future team leader. Sure, Argenta was no Dauntless, but she was strong, versatile and sturdy, that perfect combination that you saw in most of the high-ranking capes.

"What, exactly, do you want from Hebe?" Argenta said. Was she being jealous? Possessive? Protective?

"Relax girl, I promise, I wouldn't do anything you wouldn't," Hoyden said.

"I… what?" Argenta said, slightly confused.

"Look, Hebe can make her own decisions, okay?"

Argenta didn't seem to agree with that though, and she frowned. Then, electricity started sparking between her fingers, and Argenta grabbed the cuff of her vest. In return, Hoyden readied her power, lurking just beneath the surface. If this girl tried anything, tried it without her armor equipped, she was pretty sure she would win.

"Listen up Hoyden, I don't give a fuck who you are, who you work with, or what your power is. You hurt that girl, I will fucking murder you, capisce?"

"I'd like to see you try, drama queen," Hoyden replied, twisting herself out of Argenta's grip. "Someone piss in your cereal or something?"

Argenta, sadly, wasn't in the mood to put some weight behind her threats. Instead, she turned around, and started to walk away, before turning back, and looking Hoyden in the eyes. "I'm watching you," she said, pointing at her own eyes, and then at Hoyden.

***Hebe***

"So, you'll be leaving early huh," Hoyden said.

"Yeah, Vista is basically asleep already, jetlag and everything, and my dad wants to make sure to get back before Lung does. Stuff is calming down back home, and he wants to keep it like that," I replied.

"Well, guess it'll be boring again once you're gone," Hoyden said.

"Sorry," I said, a small smile on my face. Poor Hoyden, she wouldn't have to sit through a multiple-hour flight.

"So, you wanna, you know, go sneaking about again some other time?" Hoyden asked.

I thought about it. Sneaking about, sabotaging the electrical net, hiding in the utility closet together, her lips touching mine…

"I… uhmmm, yes? I think?" I answered. I mean, sure, I'd liked it, liked it very much, but that had all been because of the mission. We'd needed to hide, pretend we were doing something other than sneaking around. It wasn't like there was actually anything between the two of us. But, asking my dad whether we could do some sort of joint operations with the Texan Wards probably wouldn't be a problem. Even Piggy was starting to de-stress now that most of the Empire was gone.

"Okay, cool," Hoyden said, a massive grin on her face.

"Anyway, I'll be going now, catch you later!" I said, giving her a quick wave, then turning around, starting my run towards Dragon's transport.

However, Hoyden caught my hand, and spun me around on my place. I was about to say something, when I noticed she'd taken off the kerchief she was using as a mask. "Isadora," she said, a soft smile on her face, no longer hidden by the piece of cloth.

I wasn't quite sure what the protocol around stuff like this was, but in response, my free hand went to my own visor, removing it as well. "Sely," I said, and as the words left my lips, Isadora bent forwards, giving me a kiss.

This time, we didn't need to hide, distract, or deceive anyone. This time…

After what felt like an eternity, but couldn't have been more than a minute, we both took a step back again.

"I… uhm… I have to go now," I said, before running away. This time, Isadora didn't try to stop me. As I made my way towards the Dragoncraft, there was only one thing I could think about: She liked me, she actually liked me!

I almost floated to the parking area, where Dragon's vertical take-off craft was waiting. Inside, I spotted Vista sleeping in a corner, and Emma sitting in a corner, playing with her phone. My dad was talking to a screen with Dragon's face, and Rachel was sleeping in a small pile of dogs. I greeted everyone, grabbed a smartphone out of a hidden compartment, took a seat, strapped myself in, and got ready for the flight, searching for something to watch.

Two hours into the newest season of the Bet adaptation of Game of Thrones, featuring both capes and slightly less nudity, a voice called out in my ear.

"Are you sure you're not tired Sely?" Dragon asked me over my headphones.

"Not really," I whispered, trusting her speakers to pick it up. I mean, sure, it was pretty late at night, but how could I fall asleep if Isadora liked me? Like, actually liked me liked me?

"Did you have a nice night?" She asked.

"Yes. I mean, no, not at all, totally boring," I replied.

"Oh?" Dragon said. "Well, I'm just calling in to make sure you get some sleep. You don't want to get major jetlag, so you should probably try to catch some shut-eye."

"Fine mom," I complained sarcastically, while shutting down the device. To be honest, I was kind of tired, but it was just… how could I sleep right now? How could anyone?

"Good night Sely," she whispered.

"Good night," I whispered back, and as I said it, soft music started playing over my headphones, just loud enough to drown out the barely audible noise from the engine.


	70. Chapter 10,1

**Chapter 10.1**

I looked at my luggage, trying to figure out if I had everything I needed. Underwear, shirts, pants, a sundress, and enough socks that I wouldn't have to worry about pairing them up again after washing. Slippers, sandals, a proper labcoat, my laptop, my e-reader...

Yeah… that last one had to go. It was the fifth one dad had gotten me so far, and if I brought it, I'd just turn it into parts again. Which, to be perfectly honest, wasn't entirely my fault. E-Ink was amazing, and there was just so much I could do with it!

Alas, I'd have to do with, like, real-life squid ink or something for the coming weeks. I wasn't entirely sure how Blasto did his stuff. Did he take notes by squeezing out a squid above his paper? Was his door made out of meat or wood or whatever? Did he even have a door, or would it be more like a butthole, with a round entrance that could tighten itself when he asked? And did that then mean he was secretly a hobbit?

No, of course not, that would be silly. Accord had been the tiny man in Boston, and by law, there couldn't be two of those. It was like how people on tv-shows never had the same name, unless it was a set-up for a shitty thing with cape names, now that I thought about it. For some reason, even though there were thousands of us, you didn't find anyone called Arms-mistress, or Triumphant, or Miss Militant when browsing PHO, except maybe shitty shipfics that tried to pretend they weren't about real people.

I still regretted the first time I clicked on The Silver Puppy, which was about a thinly veiled relationship between Emma and Rachel that made absolutely no sense. For one thing, the Rachel in that story mind-controlled her dogs, rather than just training them, and the alternate version of Emma actually listened to good music instead of the boring pop-punk she kept playing on repeat as some form of teenage rebellion.

I'd told her that listening to non-christian music wasn't all that hardcore compared to smashing an endbringer with boats, but she wouldn't listen, and pretended to like the shittiest songs ever anyway.

Right, back to my bags. What was I missing… Right, toiletries, my hairbrush, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, maybe my bikini? Did Boston have any good beaches in the summer? It was probably better to bring it and not need it then the other way around…

More clothes and other personal items flew through my room, roughly into the direction of my bags. I'd have to figure out some way to make them bigger, maybe reduce the weight. I could probably re-use parts of the designs I already had for the weight, but actually making the inside smaller? Should be possible, given that Missy could do it, but I had no idea how she managed to make that work, and neither did she. Maybe a pocket dimension instead? There was enough information about those in the internal PRT database, and I could probably use my own power as a blueprint. Then again, that would lead to stuff randomly disappearing later with my luck. Scanning around, I found a tube of sunscreen, one that would actually be useful if I went outside without a forcefield active, and was about to pack it when I was interrupted by a song from my phone, sung by my favorite person in the whole world, even though her music tastes were just as shitty as Emma's.

She was a Tinker girl, I said see you later girl, I hope I am good enough for you

Running for it, I almost stumbled over the assembled heaps of clothes before grabbing it from my desk, and subsequently crashing down on my bed, picking it up.

"Hello, you're talking to the Hoyden fanclub hotline, this is Sely speaking, how can I help you?" I said, putting on an overly peppy voice like you'd expect from a brainwashed callcenter worker.

"A Hotline huh? That referring to you or to me?" she asked.

"You of course, you silly," I replied, a smile spreading across my face. When I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine her being here in the room with me.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure you're the hot one," she replied, and I was suddenly relieved that she wasn't in the room, mostly because she couldn't see me lighting up like a tomato.

"No," I replied, trying to keep my cool. "You're the one that's beautiful."

"You know Sely, we should really write this down one of these days, we can't keep having fights like this," Isadora said, and I could already see the grin on her face. Knowing her, she would run to Eurybia immediately after this call, tell her that she'd had a fight with her girlfriend, and promptly get free ice cream and sympathy for it.

"Oh, what do you propose?" I asked.

"Well, how about we take turns, without duplicates?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'll start, show you how it works. From this point on in our relationship, the word cute, as applied to people, will only, forever and always, refer to you, and not me," she stated, making it sound all official and things.

"Well, in that case, you're the hot one," I replied.

"Yeah, but you're beautiful," she retorted.

"Which is absolutely nothing compared to how gorgeous you are," I countered.

"Yet even my looks are nothing compared to those pretty eyes of yours," she replied.

"Well…" I said, adding in a pause both for dramatic effect, and to think of something even better to call her. "The only reason every love song ever is not about you is because they don't know your real name."

"I guess that's true, but if the ancient Greeks were still around, they'd sail straight past Troy right to Brockton Bay."

Again, I blushed. Isadora, Hoyden, my girlfriend, always knew exactly what to say. She was just absolutely perfect, and better than me in every single way. Better than anyone could ever be. The only reason Scion didn't bring her flowers every day was because he felt intimidated by how amazing she was.

"So, you ready for your trip?" she asked.

"Uh-huh, packing my bags now," I replied.

"I'm still jealous though… are you sure you can't come to Texas instead?"

"Maybe next time?" I asked. "I mean, I should be able to con Dragon into transporting me, but are you sure you don't want to come here instead?"

"And leave Texas? I mean, we actually have crime here right now, they can't exactly miss me, you know."

"I know," I replied, saddened. "But if you dropped by, we could go swimming? The water's really nice over here you know, we could basically spend the entire day on the beach."

"Say Sely?" she asked, skeptically. "Are you trying to bribe me by making me think of you in a bikini?"

"No?" I lied. "But, I mean, if you wanted to see that…"

"Aaargh… I hate my schedule!" she screamed in frustration. "I've got training, and these stupid PR events, and homework, and now you get to go on a trip to Boston…"

"It's a study trip," I claimed, trying to defend myself. Yes, theoretically, part of this was a study trip. Dad thought it would be good if I became more familiar with certain aspects of my power. Specifically, I seemed to be slightly less shit at wet tinkering, working with biological matter and other such things. I wasn't good at it, or rather, I hadn't really done much with it, but my dad's theories about my tinkering specialty meant that he thought it would be worth it for me to explore that aspect a bit more, even if it was just in case that the city was under a biological attack of some sort. What he didn't say, but what I was pretty sure was in the back of his mind, was that he wanted some sort of option in case Panacea got mastered or something like that.

"Well, at least promise you'll call? Send me some cute pictures?" Isadora asked

"Sure," I replied, "if you send me a few of that hot bod of yours? Maybe standing over a fallen villain?"

"Superhero selfies? I think I can do those," she replied.

"Looking forward to it," I said, smiling.

"Okay, well, I guess…" she stopped halfway through her sentence

"Bye?" I asked.

"Bye!" she replied.

"See you later!"

"See you in your pics!"

"No, I"ll see you in your pics first!"

"Bye!"

"Bye."

I waited, phone still held to my head, and listening closely, I could still hear her breathing. I waited another minute.

"So, are you going to hang up?" I asked.

"Are you?" she replied.

"Not until you hang up!"

"No, you hang up!"

"No, you hang up first!"

"No villain stuff, no experimenting on sentient beings, no stealing his stuff, no going out in costume, and most certainly no smoking!" dad said, putting extra emphasis on the last part of the list. From the way he was talking, he didn't mean cigarettes, which only made me curious about what he was actually referring to. Did he think I'd be smoking weed or something like that? Didn't he understand that, after my experiences in Westlake, I really wasn't interested in trying out drugs for myself. I'd seen enough of what they could do. Drugs could make people melt stuff, and that was bad.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I know dad. You've only told me, like, fifty times or something like that," I replied, only exaggerating a tiny bit.

"Well, I want to make sure that I don't see you on the news all of a sudden. So behave, or you're grounded. At work and at home," he said in what he must have thought was a suitable Dad voice, but mostly sounded like his Assault fucked up again and now I have to go and clean up the mess voice.

"And you," I said, firmly pointing my finger at his chest, trying to mimic his tone of voice."If you get the girl pregnant, then you better marry her this time!"

"I will, I will," he said, only half-joking. Maybe it wasn't entirely fair of me, bringing up my mother like that, but I'd grown up without him, and I didn't want to miss out on any little brothers or sisters. "Now, you have a train to catch."

"Okay… good luck!" I smiled. Not that he'd need it. Just about everyone who knew them knew that my dad and Dragon were perfect for each other, except for him of course. I wasn't quite certain if Dragon knew, she was mysterious like that.

I grabbed my suitcase, silently praising the wheels on the bottom of it, and wheeled it towards the train. It was old, long, and unbelievably fashionable. You know, if it was the 1930's. These days, everyone used planes or cars, but apparently my dad had decided that putting me on the train would be less of a hassle than getting me a plane ride to Boston, and for some reason he couldn't just ask Dragon to fly me there… probably because it wasn't exactly public knowledge that I would be hanging with Blasto for a week or two.

Boston, it said on the side, which happened to be exactly where I was heading. I had to admit, it was almost like there was an intricate system of timetables and schedules that allowed everyone to know when and where their train was leaving. Quite ingenious really.

So, for the second time in my life, I got on the train, and for the first time, I had an actual ticket. For just a second, I thought of my last ride, back before I'd had my powers. Hopefully, this one would go better.

The train itself was rather nice, much better than the planes I'd been on. Instead of boring metal and plastic, the interior was largely wooden, almost as if it hadn't been updated for a hundred years or so, because no-one had been riding trains for a hundred years or so. Dragon's planes, of course, were better, but just about nothing could compete with those.

Besides the interior, another cool thing about trains was the relative lack of security. There had been a crazy travel scare in Aleph a few years back, which had gotten people all worried about evil supervillain capes getting on planes and hijacking them.

How exactly scanning someone's luggage for knives longer than half an inch would stop someone that could shoot gravity blasts out of his eyes, I had no idea, but the guys in charge were well-paid, so there was probably something I was missing. After all, the only other possibility was that the government was a bunch of incompetent paranoid idiots…

As to why supervillains wouldn't fight on trains, I had no idea. Maybe the idea was that, since cowboy movies were so awesome, people would do all their fighting on top of the train, away from any civilians? It was certainly a possibility. One that reminded me that I'd need to find some excuse to get on top of this train.

Stowing away my luggage, I looked around at who would be riding the train with me. The station wasn't all that busy, which probably had something to do with that the bad part of town was synonymous with the trainyard. To confirm my suspicions, there was a small group of people that reminded me very much of the ABB. That is to say, they were vaguely Asian, probably either Chinese, or Japanese, or some other ethnicity from that rough area. I wasn't really sure. They probably weren't gang members though, mostly because there were two girls my age with them, one of them wearing the Immaculata uniform.

There was also an African American man in an ill-fitting suit, something that it didn't look like he wore all that often, who entered the train in front of me, following after the extended Asian family.

"Well, see ya!" I greeted, pulling my suitcase up into the train itself, and moving through into the wagon, where the Asian family and the two black dudes were already seated. Behind me followed a few more people. There was a Russian guy with an utterly amazing accent talking to an attractive blonde. His speech was peppered with the words Nyet, Tovarich, and Fuck, and he somehow made that sound like it was originally a Russian term. Meanwhile the woman was paying close attention, except instead of listening to what he was saying, I was pretty sure she was just eyeing his biceps. Which, sure, were impressive, but not as impressive as just about every part of Isadora. I couldn't believe I hadn't talked or texted with her for more than six hours now…

As I sat down, an old lady, almost as old as the train itself, sat down on the other side of the path. Once her butt touched the seat, she pulled a bible from somewhere, and from the intensity with which she was reading it, I was pretty sure that she was convinced that what the crusades really needed was more violence. Which was probably a legitimate opinion, because I was pretty sure she'd lived through them, she was that old.

The last person to enter looked just like your average businessman. Fancy pants, suit, tie, and a laptop with lots of games on it to play during the ride. Or maybe it was his work, but anyone that took the time to work when they could be gaming was, well… I didn't want to live in a world with anyone like that.

As I was about done observing the train and its inhabitants, my traveling companions, the whistle blew. Sadly, it wasn't a steam whistle, because those were outlawed these days. At least, I was pretty sure that they were outlawed, because that would be the only real reason for a whistle, any whistle really, not to be a steam whistle.

I looked out the window, seeing that my father was still waving me goodbye. I gave him a wave back, keeping up the pretense that he'd miss me. The thing was, I knew he'd go to Canada on the first plane there, where he would be doing the horizontal tango with Dragon for the next two weeks. If I didn't get a little sister out of this, I'd kill him. Or at least foam him at really inopportune moments. Maybe just before lunch, in the cafeteria, so that everyone would have to wait to get their food.

Now, to find some way of actually getting him into the cafeteria... Maybe I could claim that Legend's evil but sexy twin sister was there to commit unspeakable culinary crimes? Probably not, after all, why date Legend's sister when you already had Dragon's attention?

I took out my phone, looked out of the window, and watched the landscape change, Brockton Bay's cityscape quickly giving way to idyllic New England farmland.

I was interrupted by the arrival of an impeccably dressed lunch-lady with a cart filled with food, drinks, serving trays and magazines. She looked at me with a fake smile on her face, asking me whether or not I would like anything from the cart. I rolled my eyes, ignoring her, and checked the messages on my phone. Maybe I had a new message from Isey?

As the lunch-lady went on to talk to the Asian family, I saw the old Christian lady glare at me, her eyes intently focused on the candy-bar now in my hands.

"You want one?" I asked, showing her my spare, but before she could answer, I heard the sound of breaking glass, and a blast of wind swept through the carriage.

Almost before I could react, the old lady had jumped onto the back of the empty seat in front of her, the Russian man had drawn a sword, the woman he had been talking to started screaming, the four men in suits stood up from their overly cramped seats, one of the Asians was almost sucked out of the now empty window by the pressure differential. The lunch-lady had grabbed a tray from her cart, and it was glowing with unnatural, parahuman energies, just like the one that she'd probably just used to break the window.

Behind me, the businessman lost his headphones, and from the sound his laptop made, he'd been watching one of those cable-exclusive tv-shows that, according to my father, I was too young to watch. He probably disapproved of all the dragons. And the incest.

While the lady with the lunch tray readied her throw, one of the Asians held out his hands. Out of it sprang a strange spear made out of purple-blue hard-light, which flew forward into the lady. Upon contact, the woman shattered into glowing crystalline shards, that turned into glittering dust the moment they hit the ground. I had to admit that, despite just seeing someone get murdered in front of me, it looked absolutely spectacular.

In reaction to that, the five men in suits, each of them eerily similar, ran for the group of asians, several of them brandishing fire-arms. One of them fired, but one of the Asian women created a see-through barrier in between them, slightly shimmering like when oil and water mixed on the surface of a road. At the same time, the old woman tried to run towards the group, leaving her bible behind, but she was interrupted by the Russian man, who slashed at her with his blade. The old woman jumped, landing on top of the blade, but the warrior reacted by making his blade retrace its own path, throwing the old woman off her balance, before she managed to keep herself from crashing into the ground by mashing one of her heels in the side of the cart. Upon closer inspection, her stiletto heels seemed to be actual stilettos. As in, the type of knife. How was she able to walk in those? Could I make them? But like, some sort of nonlethal knife, just to keep Image off my back?

I wasn't quite sure what to do. I didn't have my gear, I didn't know what I was dealing with, and I was all on my lonesome. The woman that had been talking to the Russian man before everything went down was already gone, and I heard the businessman behind me start panicking.

At least some of my questions were answered when one of the Asian men started smoking. As in, his clothes started smoking, and his eyes, rather bloodshot now that I looked at them, glowed slightly.

Lung was involved now. Pretty sure the train wasn't going to arrive in time.

Now that Lung was involved, I was pretty sure the train wouldn't arrive in Boston at all. Given that, I might as well jump into action and actually do something heroic.

Before anyone could notice, I summoned my visor in position on my face, followed by two foam grenades, a sonic disruptor, and a repeating tinkertech flashbang. I threw the two foam nades in front of me, followed by the other two devices, which soared past the burgeoning foam barrier before it could properly expand.

Then, I turned around, grabbed the businessman's arm, and dragged him into the train compartment behind us. Like hell I was going to get involved with the fight directly.

"Who, why, what is going on?" the man asked, completely oblivious to the fact that I didn't know either.

"Big cape fight. Angry Lung, time to run. That rhymes, so it's probably good advice. You stay here, I'm gonna decouple this half of the train. Once I've done that, pull the emergency brake. Also, you should totally call the cops!" I said. Then, I turned back around and took a good look at the place where the compartments met. If I remembered this correctly, the real connection happened beneath the little walkway, so I grabbed a magnetic unscrewer, and got myself a bit closer to the main workings.

I had to admit, this shit was a lot harder than Westerns made it look.

Of course, when in doubt… The last time I'd used this thing, it'd caused a bit of a stir, and a bit of an angry Piggot. Of course, she'd almost immediately said she didn't want to see it again, so…

I materialized it, looking it over. A small, nondescript metal box, with an A carved in it, for Argenta. She'd helped me while I'd been trying to figure out how to do what my father did so often, mimicking other parahuman's abilities with technology. It hadn't exactly worked out as I'd planned it. I placed it down, activated it, and hoped for the best, grabbing two hookshots in my hands.

"Stand back," I advised the still-panicking businessman.

"What are you doing?" he asked, as the box started crackling with electrical energies, the metal around it deforming, and the link between compartments starting to weaken.

"I have absolutely no idea," I replied, as the sound of tearing metal intensified. I had no idea how quick I had to be. With some luck, I'd have some time to jump over, but it was entirely possible that something would go worse.

Eventually, I heard something liquefy, and the plastic connections tore, the front of the train accelerating now that the back half was no longer connected.

"Here goes nothing," I said to no-one in particular, shooting both hookshots at the top of the compartment in front of me, and taking flight in that direction.

Five seconds later, I stood on top of the train, wind blowing through my hair, and a massive commotion happening beneath me. I saw a place where one of the strange spears had penetrated the roof, and someone had disabled my annoyances. It seemed, however, that the fighting was moving away from me, further towards the front of the train.

I looked back, and saw that the businessman had done what I'd asked of him, and the back half of the train was quickly disappearing behind me.

What was worrying however, was the large flying figure soaring through the sky, straight at the front half of the train, straight at me.


	71. Chapter 10,2

Right, mental recap, the fuck was happening here? I'd just been sitting on a train, minding my own business, going to Boston to hang with my dad's supervillain friend. A group of Asian men that, apparently, included Lung had gotten on board, followed by what I now realized was an incredibly diverse array of assassins.

Seriously, what were the odds?

Then I'd gone and unhooked half the train, jumped on top of it where I was being blasted by wind and dust (why did they never mention that in movies?) and was getting chased by what looked like a crazy bird-lady or something which… Probably another like, assassin or something?

So, two options, either they were here for me for some reason, which was unlikely, or they were here chasing after Lung, and I was just in the same train compartment by accident, which was also unlikely.

Why was it always so easy in the PRT's tactical examples? Well, nothing I could do to figure this shit out right now, better to just… not die? Cause mayhem and let someone better informed figure out this mess? My best bet was probably… Jump off into a river once the train was going over a bridge? Whistle for my faithful steed and jump off with all the loot? Get into a rooftop duel that ended with one of us hanging over the edge, then dropping off just above the water again? Were there even any major rivers between Boston and Brockton? I couldn't quite remember from my last trip.

I looked back up, squinting through the winds buffeting my face as the flying thing resolved into a winged lady that looked… remarkably much like the lunch-lady that had started this entire chain of events? Hadn't she gotten effortlessly obliterated? Or…

Right, projection, that made way more sense. The creator would've been sitting in one of the compartments I'd just dumped out of the train, requiring her to create something that could fly to chase me down. Now, how the hell did her power work? The different projections obviously looked vaguely similar, so, she could create a woman with some extra features? Probably enhanced strength or something like that, and shatters in a single good hit?

If only I had something that could actually get in a good hit… Would my Grappling-hook-launcher-thingies work? Probably not, and could I really take the risk of putting myself in a position where I showed how useless my weapons were? Then again, last time I was in Boston… From a short range, they'd probably be effective enough, especially if this thing worked as I thought it did.

I grabbed a hookshot, aiming at the front side of the compartment I was hanging on. The compartment currently filled with noise, foam, fighting capes, and an angry dragon. And hey, I was only responsible for half of those things. Improvements!

One eye on the quickly approaching projection, I fired, using the additional pull of my hookshot to walk against the wind, pulling myself further to the front of the train. I could, I suddenly realized, just repeat my earlier performance. Smack through the connectors further up the train, and all the fighting capes would be left behind. I'd just, you know, have to hope there weren't any more civilians in there.

About halfway throughout my harrowing journey to the next compartment, I saw the lady chasing the train land, unmoving wings made out of sharp-looking two-dimensional…whatever it was. She also, noticeably, wasn't shielding her eyes, or bracing against the wind, because the both of us being affected by the laws of physics would just be unfair now, wouldn't it?

She looked at me with weird, unmoving eyes. Less human-looking stuff being more obviously inhuman in the more human features? Some sort of maximum range? Just no attention for detail? Who knew?

"What do you want?" I asked, seeing if I could somehow buy myself some time. I'd have to get her to walk up to me, then surprise her with a surprise attack. Which… better than not surprising her with a surprise attack? Did that even count as a surprise attack?

The woman replied, unconvincing sounds exiting her mouth, reminiscent mostly of a dying whale that inhaled a whole lot of helium. The woman was also surprised, stopping after half a second of trying to speak.

"Guessing you can't talk like this? I replied, having reached the other side of the compartment, still holding on to my hookshot for more grip. The projection approached, grabbing hold of one of the feathers in her wings as she did so.

Yeah… I could guess what she was going to do, and I sure as hell wasn't waiting for her to do it. I materialized a foamnade the exact moment she tore it loose, I threw, hoping our projectiles would collide in mid-air, but jumped to the side anyway, launching myself off the train, forming a hookshot in my hand that I instantly fired at the side of the train, pulling me back towards it. With just the tiniest bit of luck, she'd think I just threw myself of the train entirely, and would forget about me.

Of course, I was still hanging on the side of a train wagon in which half a dozen capes were fighting, which was entirely sub-optimal. And I wasn't entirely sure what the woman was doing now either. If she took flight again, she'd see me in an instant. Just like those capes right in front of me, they'd only have to look through the window to see me hanging in there.

Luckily, they were too busy with each other to give a shit about me. The man that had been creating the shield was being mobbed by a Russian… Dodecatuplet? What the? Had those always been in the train? They had, right? I distinctly remembered them boarding, but that didn't really fit with the near-empty nature of the wagon. Some sort of Stranger danger? Anyway, three of them had grabbed hold of the shield, which seemed to be linked to his position somehow, as when the men shifted the shield around, the shielder followed along, since they seemed to be linked somehow. How did that work? Wouldn't he just be smacked back if someone smacked his shield real hard? Why have a shield then? Just a shit power?

I heard glass shattering, and looked beyond the fight, out of the windows on the other side of the train again. Bird-lady was hovering there, throwing razor-sharp feathers into the wagon.

Yeah, I wasn't gonna deal with that, let alone the crazy old lady dancing around dodging fire-blasts from a quickly growing Lung. I could already see the iron scales beneath his skin, and he was bending over to make sure he fit in the train. Yeah… I wasn't going to be able to do anything about that guy.

I jumped back up on top. If I'd seen bird-lady, she'd probably seen me as well, so I wasn't going to be able to hide here.

Back on top, I fired another hook, crawling along to make sure I wouldn't draw the projection's attention. A hard-light lance flew out of the side of the train, which she dodged through unnatural flight. Like, why get yourself wings if you don't even flap them back and forth? Couldn't she like, give herself a fake jetpack instead?

Not… not really my problem right now. I shot another hook, accelerating. I'd need to get this wagon of madness away from the train.

Reaching the end of the wagon, I remembered how they were actually connected. I couldn't easily get through it… Was there another entrance? Maybe through a window? I walked on, stepping onto the next wagon as a literal ninja appeared in front of me.

"Right… I was missing you… guess you're the one that kept the train going?" I asked.

Oni Lee didn't respond. He just glared, a knife in his hand. Was he already behind me? About to stab my brains out?

"Windy up here," Oni Lee replied, and I could see how he was bracing himself against the train. Was he squinting beneath the mask as well? Was that racist? Not if there was actual heavy wind with dust in it right?

"Look… I just wanna help the civvies, kay? Not going to interfere with whatever you guy are doing."

Oni Lee looked at me, standing as still as he could on top of a train moving around at about a hundred miles an hour. Which… wasn't all that still, but I was pretty sure I could see the gears grinding in his head.

Or not. After all, Oni Lee was known to be kind of insane. Maybe he was just thinking about his favorite Star Wars tie-in novel. Being a villainous degenerate, he probably really liked the original trilogy instead of the more polished prequels.

Oni Lee gave a curt bow, before grabbing a hand-grenade from his belt. I took a step back, was he going to explode me? How would that even work? Wouldn't the wind just blow away the grenade before anything could happen?

Except… instead of throwing it at me, he just sat down, placing the grenade beneath his butt because… why?

I whipped out two hookshots, firing at the floor just before the explosion hit. For half a second wet splatters covered my face before suddenly disappearing, ash making it's way into my clothes.

Right. Clones. He did that.

I looked at the top of the wagon, a hole torn into it where Oni Lee had been seconds before. He approved of my mission? The hell? Wasn't he a murderer?

I jumped down, landing on my feet, then falling over stumbling in pain.

Fuck… I wasn't wearing my costume, so I still had a normal amount of mass… "Fuck… fuck… fuck."

"And hello to you too," a girl's voice replied.

I looked up, seeing the two teenage girls that had been in the compartment before, the ones that had been sitting near Lung. Prostitutes or something? The one that had spoken up, standing in front of the other girl, was wearing a fancy Chinese dress in red with gold and silver embroidery that looked form-fitting, only not for her, the cloth off in a few places, which didn't really make sense what with how fancy it looked. Her hair was done up in some sort of knot with a stick through it, though she wasn't wearing high heels.

"Hi," I replied, looking past the two of them. They'd come running from the wagon with all the cape fights, and I could still see them all there. Half the place was on fire, it was littered with corpses, and most of the metal was giving out. All it needed was… see-through containment foam? That would work, then it wouldn't be immediately obvious it was there.

The second girl, wearing what I had come to recognize as an Immaculata uniform, her hair let down and hanging nearly to her butt, said something to the first one in a language I didn't understand, but was probably Chinese or some such. Which. Now that I thought about it, maybe those language courses the PRT offered could actually be useful? There were quite a few immigrants in Brockton, and though theoretically, they should probably be speaking English or like, Native American, matter of fact was that some of them didn't, or just like, made a million translation errors in English. I could counter that, by making a million errors when speaking Chinese back to them, making things more equal.

"So uhm, yeah, I'm a superhero, here to safe the day," I said. Giving the nervous Chinese girl a quick wave. "Or, you know, visit my Uncle in Boston. Either of those."

"Yay, more capes, just what we needed," the girl in the dress said, walking forwards and trying to shove past me.

"You two okay?" I asked, seeing the one in the uniform get pulled along, looking rather panicked. Even moreso than the rest of us.

"Yeah, just… you do your hero thing? We're getting out of here," dress-girl said. "C'mon Shi, let's get going."

"Nà shì shuí?" Shi replied. Was she asking a question? Why didn't her companion respond whenever she said something?

I turned away from them, dropping two grenades between me and the fighting. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this situation, and I needed to figure out what the hell was going on, or it'd be the same situation as it had been back in Westlake, with me running around like a headless chicken chasing useless ends. So, why could one Asian girl be leading another around, without her telling the other what was going on… Right… ABB.

I took out a hookshot, holding it out in front of me, aiming at dress-girl. "Hold up for just a second."

She turned her head around as they were walking, ready to dismiss me as her eyes noticed my weapon.

"Who are you, where are you taking that girl, why are you taking her, and why doesn't she speak English?" I asked, wishing desperately I'd taken an interrogation course. Did the PRT even have those? Did I need a good cop for this? Cause I sure as hell was the bad cop here. Not because I was, y'know, evil, but because I was bad at this shit.

The girl looked frustrated, putting her hands up as Shi looked even more confused, looking back between me and her companion. No fear on Shi's face though, at least not beyond what could be expected from the cape fight. The hell?

"Fucking… I hate my brother sometimes, ya know?" the girl replied.

"Not really, y'know, relevant?" I said.

"Well yeah, but, s'not what it looks like, and it's all my brother's fault, kay?"

"Go on?" I asked.

"Look, I didn't ask for this all, kay? Eh's the one that wanted to join a gang, I just looked a bit like-" the sound of tearing metal interrupted us, and I looked behind me, through my foam, into the torn compartment. Whatever had happened, half the wagon behind us had been torn off, and a large bulky dragon was now standing in the middle of the wagon, tearing the sides off of the train as it turned around, looking at me, liquid fire seeping out of its maw, his eyes glowing with fire.

"Run!" I yelled as Lung exhaled, spewing a fireball at me.

It impacted the translucent barrier, burning its way through the chemicals, but buying me some time. My special mix wasn't as flame-retardant as the official product, but it did well enough at providing a temporary barrier.

Shi and dress-girl didn't need to be told twice, and they were already halfway through the wagon as a plan snuck its way into my head.

I had absolutely no chance in hell of fighting Lung, and the only thing I could really do was buy some time for the civilians. That… just might be enough?

I aimed up with the threatening hookshot I still had in my hands, and made my way back through the roof, ending up on top of the train once again. Looking around, we were travelling through a forest and/or fire hazard, and the half-destroyed piece Lung had just torn off was quickly disappearing in the distance.

Oh, and the wind buffeting my face was back, and Lung had followed my example, clawing his way onto the top of a train.

One hell of a final confrontation, and one hell of a way to go out.

I really didn't want to go out. Not against a big brute like Lung…

Damnit… my legs barely obeyed as I stood up, trembling beneath me as the dragon approached. Why couldn't it have been a cutesy robot instead? Someone that played video-games instead of burned people? Though… I was pretty sure Dragon also burned people. You know, here and there. When necessary.

"Sup Smaug?" I asked, trying to put on a brave face. But not too brave, that would've been an obvious lie.

"Fwer ith mwhai thiduh!" he… mangled? It was difficult to make out what he was trying to say, what with the accent, the wind, the non-human mouth and vocal chords and the, well, sheer anger.

"So… you're Lung right? Brute four to nine, Blaster two to six? Those two being ranges and not your shift?"

Lung shook his head back and forth, befuddled. "Ther?" he asked again.

I grabbed something out of my personal pocket, hoping it would work on a bigger object too. Not right now, but… it couldn't not help having it with me.

"So… heard you grow bigger? When given a threatening challenge?"

He stalked forwards, claws tearing into the metal as the broken train carriage gave away beneath his weight. The fire had receded though. Was he thinking twice about melting through the floor beneath him?

"Cause the thing is? I'm not really, y'know…" I took off my visor, my eyes getting even more sore from all the dust the train was kicking up without it, but for these intense purposes, I looked like your average teenage girl. Defenseless and pathetic.

"Threatening?" I continued, dropping the device in my hands as I held them up above my head. I really fucking hoped that my uselessness would finally be a point in my favor.

Lung kept approaching, but slowly grew noticeably smaller, the claws on his hands (paws?) retracting a bit, like a cat's.

"Cause, I dunno what all that shit was about, but I just want to protect the civvies, ya know? No harm done to you and yours."

Lung got up, standing on his hind legs as he further reduced in size. Still like ten feet tall, he looked at me with a half-draconian face. "Where is she?" he asked, stepping forward as his back-claws gave him much-needed traction.

"Not sure who you're talking about," I replied.

"She," he replied, a hard-light feather suddenly sticking out of the side of his arm, blood spurting out of it with the rhythm of his heart.

We both looked to the side at once, spotting the projection attacking a now weaker Lung.

Well, I didn't need to get a second opening. Lung could handle this. In the meantime, I placed my metal-melting device on the floor beneath me, pressed activate, then legged it further along the train. As I reached the next compartment, the device activated, melting the metal around it, and breaking another carriage in half. Lung, the flying projection he was attacking, and the now burning forest around it were left in the distance.

I plonked down, the wind heavy against my back as I tried to catch my breath.

Fuck… that was heavy… how long had it been? Like five minutes? But so much had happened… I'd have to call this in probably, inform Piggy and everything, would probably mess with my planned vacation, maybe even call back dad and Dragon from their search and/or porking…

"Still windy," Oni Lee said, appearing in front of me with a knife out and a gun in his other hand. Since when did he carry a pistol? And was that blood on his blade?

"So, problem," he continued. "Boss wants me to protect her, but they keep coming."

I looked at him. Oni Lee was… hard to figure out. Just a weird guy, with his ninja-thing, his loyalty to Lung. I'd heard some of the analysts speculate that he was mentally impaired somehow, but I wasn't quite sure… Then again, he certainly wasn't acting like what I'd expect. Which… I'd expected him to stab me here, so I was okay with that.

"You mean… those two girls?"

Oni Lee nodded near imperceptibly, a miniature movement of his head. "Need safe place. Politics. Government won't work."

Politics? Was this… No, wait, Lung had been at the Leviathan fight in Holland, right? And at the party? That… that actually made sense.

I thought about it for a second, but… if they were civilians that couldn't go to the government for some reason, and murderous capes that scared even Oni Lee were after them… Well, I had an excuse not to call this in then didn't I?

"I… May know a place," I replied. "You ever hear of this guy called Blasto?"


End file.
